Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub

The Travellers' Pub is the place to ask questions when you're confused, lost, afraid, tired, annoyed, thoughtful, or helpful. To start a new topic, click the "Add topic" tab, so that it gets added at the bottom of the page, and sign your post by appending four tildes (~~~~)

Keeping the pub clean is a group effort. If we have too many conversations on this page, it gets too noisy and hard to read. If you see an old conversation (i.e. a month dormant) that could be moved to a talk page, please do so, and add "{{swept}}" there, to note that it has been swept in from the pub. Try to place it on the discussion page roughly in chronological order.

A question regarding a destination article should be swept to the article discussion page.

A discussion regarding a policy or the subject of an expedition can be swept to the policy or expedition discussion page.

A simple question asked by a user can be swept to that user's talk page, but consider if the documentation needs a quick update to make it clearer for the next user with the same question.

A pointer to a discussion going on elsewhere, such as a notice of a star nomination or a request to comment on another talk page, can be removed when it is old. Any discussion that occurred in the pub can be swept to where the main discussion took place.

Any discussions that do not fall into any of these categories, and are not of any special importance for posterity, should be archived to Project:Travellers' pub/Archives and removed from here. If you are not sure where to put a discussion, let it be—better to spend your efforts on those that you do know where to place.

I created this today after hiking the trail yesterday. Please have a look and tell me what it needs before getting to mainspace or whether there are general reasons for it not being fit for mainspace... Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:18, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

It's a real/official hiking trail, so sure, it can be moved into mainspace. ϒpsilon (talk) 18:35, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Would you say something major is missing/unclear? Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:58, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Not that I can see. However, a couple pictures would be good, along with a few minor corrections which I can do now. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 19:19, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

As this seems to be a hiking route along roads, I'd wonder about what the roads are like. Are they small roads you share with the cars, which will slow down on meeting you, are they passing by in 80 km/h while you have a half a metre stripe for yourself (if that), or is there a dedicated trail away from the road – or something else? Is the route marked? Are the breweries easy to find in the villages? --LPfi (talk) 08:12, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

The trail is partly through the woods on trails that you will not share with any kind of motorized traffic (apart from maybe forestry related stuff), crosses some roads, some of them not that minor and also makes use of village roads, which are paved and either so calm as to not need sidewalks or equipped with sidewalks. The trail is marked with either the "Fünf Seidla Steig" logo (which contains those words) or as part of the longer "Frankenweg". The breweries are in most cases near the center of the towns or serve as a village center of sorts, but yes, there could be more information on that in the article. In general, if the weather is good and it is a holiday or weekend, there'll be plenty of other people hiking that same trail and the locals will obviously know where the brewpubs are. The website also provides the GPS track for download as well as maps. Hobbitschuster (talk) 09:39, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Coming back to this, I think it would be better to write the "walk" section in paragraph form. If there is going to be a list, there should be bullets before each one. Otherwise, though, I'm okay with it being in mainspace. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:21, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, I haven't gotten around to that correction, but I've moved it to mainspace. Hobbitschuster, thanks for the work you did on the itinerary. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 05:15, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi all, I took a shot at creating a districtifier web app. This tool should help to create dynamic district overview maps in less time than what is currently necessary. Please have a look, if you want:

Under Help is a video ("Wikivoyage Districitifier - How to use") in which I try to explain how to use the app (sorry for saying the word "so" like a million times...).
There are plenty of things, which can be improved. I will try to continue the work in the coming weeks. Cheers, --Renek78 (talk) 19:09, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

I like it! Definitely a good idea that you can more-or-less draw your own districts. In the display, though, it starts at "District Zero". That seems a little counterintuitive. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 01:13, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Selfie City, glad to hear! Shouldn't be a big problem to rename the first district. Gonna do it ASAP. But the idea is, that editors delete this placeholder name and enter a proper one. --Renek78 (talk) 19:26, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Also, what exactly is the JSON input? Is that so you can divide other cities into districts as well? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:42, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Exactly, Selfie City! At the very bottom you can click on the word "help" to get some instructions on how to do it. I am trying to simplify the process of getting those district areas into the tool. --Renek78 (talk) 09:05, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Update: The district areas can now be downloaded by simply clicking a button. Should make it a little more user-friendly. --Renek78 (talk) 22:24, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

The articles says, "Second biggest airport in Finland". As if that makes it a "huge airport" — sounds like the writer of the article was trying to provide arguments for it to be an article. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:29, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

It certainly doesn't merit an article. Helsinki Airport (which I started because all other Nordic capitals already had one and itis a fairly important transit point for passengers between Asia and European airports with no connections to Asia) is sort of "borderline", but all other airports in Finland are considerably smaller with at most 10-20 departures a day and clearly don't need their own articles. ϒψιλον (talk) 20:00, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Policy requires at least 100 flights, so this one is not nearly enough. But how would you redirect or merge? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:14, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

The Community Wishlist Survey. Please help translate to your language.

Hey everyone,

The Community Wishlist Survey is the process when the Wikimedia communities decide what the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech should work on over the next year.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. You can post technical proposals from now until 11 November. The communities will vote on the proposals between 16 November and 30 November. You can read more on the wishlist survey page.

What do you think Wikivoyage needs currently? A better mobile Main page? --Zerabat (talk) 14:41, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Better mobile functionality all round, for all wikis. Mobile sucks:

Having pictures and infoboxes all lined up at the top of the section looks clunky.

If you look at a page revision, then try to edit, it goes to 'view source' and treats it as an old revision which can't be edited, even when it's the latest version.

Most administrative tools (moving / deleting / protecting pages, changing / revoking user rights) are not available in mobile; you have to navigate to the desktop version.

And, yes, the Main page is horrible.

But of course all this should be stated in the survey =) If you agree with me, please say so when you complete the survey.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:54, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

The other key thing with mobile is that the POI maps in articles should show my current location, so I can see what is nearby. --Traveler100 (talk) 16:59, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

I believe that another round of maps improvements has been mentioned as a possible candidate, perhaps in the context of mobile? Some of m:Wikivoyage/Wishlist might be out of date, but it might also have some valid ideas.

TT, work-me should probably hear more about your old revision problem. That sounds like a bug. Would you mind posting the details on my talk page? (I'm assuming that figuring out what needs to get filed in the bug report won't be of general interest.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

If the marker limit was increased to "999" instead of "99", that would make a huge difference. Of course, it would require making the digits smaller so another one could be added, unless the markers were increased in size. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:12, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps a map that's expandable to an entire page with a mouseover? But how would that translate for mobile phone users? A swipe? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:09, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘About the maps, though: I get the feeling that the tech group would be reluctant to work on the same thing twice in a row. I think we ought to have at least somewhat different suggestions this time so it doesn't seem like we're just dissatisfied with the work the tech group did last year. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 01:37, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

In terms of dev teams, there are advantages to working with stuff that you're familiar with. It would be easier to do map stuff two years in a row than to do it every other year. Consequently, I think that they would be pleased if something map-related won. (It's of course not really up to them what wins anyway, but we should not be discouraged from asking for more map things.)

What exactly to ask for is a separate question. For example, do we want something more style-oriented, such as phab:T146343, or more function-oriented, such as having it work better on mobile?

I think we all know from the past that the only way that Wikivoyages will get what they need is to band together towards one (or perhaps two) priorities. Otherwise, the big wikis will basically outvote us, and we'll get nothing. User:Atsirlin has been very good at organizing ideas, and perhaps he could share his thoughts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:18, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I have to admit that I am really busy in the next 10 days because of Wiki Loves Monuments, and I am afraid that we already lost the priority in adding Kartographer issues to the Community Wishlist. Several map-related proposals are around, but none of them is focused on our needs, and they will generally disperse the support of the community, as well as the attention of the developers who will probably not pick up more than one such proposal for 2019.

It may be better to think which of the existing proposals is of potential interest for us, and try to tune it to our needs. But I can't of much help with it right now. --Alexander (talk) 13:10, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

If multiple maps projects win, then the team will address multiple maps projects. They will respond to the top 10 vote-getters, even if all ten are about maps. But I agree with Alexander that multiple proposals tend to disperse the support. We can also recommend that any closely related maps proposals be merged. (Voting doesn't start for a couple of weeks.)

In a non-maps idea, we've struggled with getting inline audio for our phrasebooks. Maybe something like phab:T20852 would be helpful to us, as well as other projects? (That task is specifically about an inline player for MIDI files, but we could write something fresh that covered exactly what we wanted.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:25, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

We're focusing a lot on dynamic maps. But I don't see much else that would help us. So I think we should probably stick to the dynamic maps for wishlist proposals, along with maybe the audio files. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:50, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Below, we recognized a potential wishlist proposal, to see changes on Wikidata in recent changes+watchlists 1) only for relevant properties and 2) for Wikidata items linked to on the page, in addition to the page itself (i.e. listings and markers). There is a proposal for (1), but not for (2). Thoughts? ARR8 (talk) 15:08, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

What do you think if we ask for help to make a mobile version of the Listing Editor? It would be very beneficial. --Zerabat (talk) 18:05, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't think we need help with that. That's front-end scripting, and the devs' efforts would be wasted on it. Add to that the cross-platform framework we're already using that should make such development easy, and that the German WV has already done it, and it doesn't seem necessary. However, to get the ListingEditor to load on mobile at all, the German WVers had to load it through common.js, because gadgets aren't loaded on mobile. So we could ask for that. ARR8 (talk) 18:37, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to star status. However, since things can get out of date, and many of star articles don't even have coordinates (and, therefore, do not really showcase the best of Wikivoyage), I think it might be worthwhile to consider removing star status for articles and merge these into "guide" status.

The problem is that there are some articles which are really good and perhaps deserve even more than just guide status. However, I think requirements like custom pagebanners, etc. make guide status a high level to reach for an article, let alone star status. Star status seems to be over-the-top; e.g., all the nominating just to give an article a status that most people wouldn't notice anyway, or understand what it all means.

An example of a star article that's not particularly good is Menzies. Quite a few of the listings don't even have coordinates. I brought this up on the Menzies talk page but got no response. There are probably many guide articles that are just as good as the Menzies article, just that they haven't been nominated yet.

What do others think about this? Removing star status would be a big step, but it would save us a lot of time over something that isn't particularly important, IMO.

Is everyone okay with this being posted here? If it should be at Wikivoyage talk:Star articles or somewhere like that, I'll move it, but I doubt it would get the attention there that is necessary for discussing something this important. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 04:18, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't pay much attention to star status, but there are some editors who put a lot of effort into improving articles to get them to star status, and improving articles is good. So I'd be in favour if keeping it. Would we consider making the status a tine-limited thing, i.e., it automatically expires after two years, after which it is reviewed to see if it has been updated enough (and kept up with our changing requirements for star status) to warrant the status being renewed? Ground Zero (talk) 04:23, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Star articles are written one by one over time and probably edited less than others (not that much to improve), so it is quite natural they are written to older standards – and not updated much more often than articles in general. But they are not too many, 74 in Category:Star articles, so making an expedition to find banner images, update listings etc. would not be too difficult. I do not use the star status too much, but when trying to learn what to aim for, the star articles of similar type are a good starting point. And besides motivating editors, I am sure many readers enjoy the star guides. So, I suggest making a concerted effort to get the star articles worth their stars. Later, I think the periodic review is also a good tool. When we have assured star articles are up to current standards, I think we should start giving them more visibility, e.g. wp-sv features a star of the day on their main page. --LPfi (talk) 07:29, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree that some people really enjoy that process and status, so I'm inclined to keep it.

It sounds like adding coordinates to star articles could be a useful COTM. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:54, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

I strongly oppose removing star status altogether, but conversely strongly support reviewing articles marked as stars to check whether they really fulfil the criteria. Fixer-uppers should be fixed, and those which require more work may be bumped down to whatever status is appropriate. A COTM could well be the best way to handle this, and one which I may even participate in. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:34, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Just in case people have not noticed, this months cotm is adding coordinates to listings of star status articles. Although a few have been done in the last week, it is a lot of work. Will need more contributors to complete them all by the end of the month. All welcome to join in. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:06, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

I'd keep the concept of Star status articles, though we somehow need to streamline the process for the nomination, and that might include rethinking the requirements for Star status. For years the Star article nomination has been at a standstill, with the oldest discussion being started back in 2014. When you notice this, you probably don't feel much enthusiasm nominating new articles or otherwise participating in the discussions.

Almost all of the current star articles were largely written back in the Wikitravel era before we had dynamic maps and by editors that have left the project. This means we don't necessarily have anyone on board who knows all the small details about e.g. districts of Chicago and Washington, D.C. or Bali, and as the Star articles almost certainly are out of date to some extent, their status should be reviewed. Instead, there might be other articles that are worthy of Star status — for instance articles that have been recently featured on the Main Page. -- ϒψιλον (talk) 20:48, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

As the discussion period stated on Wikivoyage:Star nominations is 3 weeks, should we not remove most of the nomanation proposals currently there. Then maybe start afresh with hopefully more people assisting. --Traveler100 (talk) 16:32, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Sure, although there are some 2018 nominations that are still valid and haven't been reviewed much yet. All the other nominations are like Jarndyce v Jarndyce. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:37, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Clearly the 3 week period is too short. It's not just a question of deciding whether or not an article is good enough (akin to deciding whether or not a user is fit to be admin), there's a process whereby the community gives suggestions on how the article can be improved, and these suggestions then have to be agreed to and effectuated. There has been, for instance, much useful feedback on my Farnborough nomination which I intend to implement, but haven't had the chance to do so, and no-one else seems bothered to. I don't see why there has to be an arbitrary time limit - the articles aren't going anywhere and, for the most part, neither are we - but it does take time to imagine and implement perfection :-) Time that we, as volunteers with busy lives, don't always have in spades. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:05, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Well, the 3-week period hasn't been followed at least since mid-2014; perhaps if it was followed, we'd get more done in relation to our star articles. And with the nominations that are 3+ years old, enough feedback has been provided, IMO. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with feedback, but after a few years it's long past time to decide whether the nomination should succeed or fail. Reasons to support/oppose were listed years ago; long ago, it was time to come to a decision, and we didn't, so now we should.

However, with the newer nominations, feedback is needed and would be very helpful. And I think the period for nominating could be expanded to 2 months, perhaps, but not much more. What's needed at the WV:Star nominations page is more activity, not more time. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:12, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Extending discussion period to 2 months sound like a good idea. --Traveler100 (talk) 17:28, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

I suppose two months is enough for people to see the nomination and give initial feedback. If the discussion is then moved to the article's talk page, the improvements can be made and the discussions go on. I have not been involved, so I cannot say whether there is some timeframe beyond two months in which the articles could get ready for being accepted, but if it takes more than a year, a new nomination is probably more useful. --LPfi (talk) 17:41, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Are there any objections to expanding the time to 2 months? If not, I will make the change; however, if we set 2 months as the limit, I think we should get those really old nominations out of the way. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:53, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

As long as the discussions are swept to the article's talk page, as LPfi suggested, and not uselessly archived into oblivion, I can support a two month limit. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:15, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Okay; I'll adjust accordingly. And now it's time to keep the page current so that Wikivoyage:Star nominations never gets abandoned again. Once again, thanks for all the input on this. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:23, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

K7L plunged forward with this edit. I'm not exactly opposed to it, but after a decision was made by the community I don't see why this should be edited so quickly.

Hopefully, though, everyone's okay with K7L's edit. Then we can move ahead with the star nominations. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:17, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

The whole point of the proposed two-month period was to leave a reasonable amount of time to fix any deficiencies in the article. If there's consensus that a page is ready to go as-is, why wait so long? K7L (talk) 23:30, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I agree there. If there's consensus to make it a star article, we should go ahead and make it one. I think I understand your edit better now; I thought more that you were reinforcing the old three-week rule despite the consensus on this page. But if you're just helping articles reach star status faster if there is consensus, then I don't think anyone will be against that. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:32, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

We've brought down the list of star nominations from 11 to 9 and I'm waiting a little before I look to slush a couple more. The star nominations revival back in early September was short-lived, and while there was quite a lot of activity, not any real progress was made other than expanding the list of nominations. This time, a lot to do with Traveler100's nomination to de-star La Macarena and update some policy details, real progress is being made.

The progress is that T100 has upgraded Travemunde to star and I've made a couple minor edits to the article itself — things like bullets before a couple listings, a better spot for paragraph, so we can get moving with these nominations. I also slushed the nomination for Indianapolis. I'm hoping to get consensus to slush Quy Nhon and perhaps slush Kraainem, along with a support vote for Childs. All that is needed is input, which does not require too much knowledge about the articles. Really just confirmations so we can get the star nominations going the way they should again.

Everyone who has helped on this, thanks for your help so far as we continue to make Wikivoyage a great travel guide. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:22, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Yep, the progress continues. We're getting close to being able to slush one and we've also nominated a new one, Bouzigues and there are 2 de-star nominations, La Macarena and Isle Royale National Park. Technically, I still should mention this information here per policy, but we'll see how that goes soon. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:04, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

A little heads-up for everyone; I just checked out what articles and pages I had on my watchlist. There were almost 200 of them — more than half of them articles that I've created, worked on or otherwise had interest a long time ago (some were redirects or even deleted). And user pages/talk pages that were added to the watchlist because I've created a talk page by welcoming a new user (registered or IP) and forgot to turn off the blue star before creating the article.

It's of course up to yourself what articles you want to watch, but why not check out your watchlist just for the lulz and you will probably find some articles and pages that you had no idea you were watching. ϒψιλον (talk) 19:57, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

I've at least partially cleared out my list of 200+ watchlist pages in the past. I should do it again the future, perhaps the near future. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:47, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

It is just too much work. Most of the "uninteresting" pages on the list are no problem, as they just sit around, they never show up as nobody edits them. But if trying to edit the watchlist 80 % of the items are that kind of pages, and I have to check them to know they are. Pages that show up can be removed from the watchlist while I check an edit (from the watchlist or Resent Changes).

There should be a way to temporarily add a page to one's watchlist: if I welcome a new user, revert a test edit or contribute to an article, I want to watch the page for enough time for me to see any reactions. After a week the page is just adding clutter to the watchlist, but removing it is not worth the effort. I sometimes thought of having a clean list on my own computer and doing diffs once a month or so, but I suppose that too is more work than just having the cluttered list (I suppose the technical limits are high enough not to be a problem for me).

Anyone who knows how to do this and willing to give it some time. We could do with good map shapes for the districts of Austin in preparation for next months cotm. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:36, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

first, You may need to provide the Wikidata ID for each districts to the OSM tag.(the answer maybe as like Tainan)--Yuriy kosygin (talk) 17:44, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

True. No district boundaries for Austin have been created in OpenStreetMap yet. So either someone adds them to OSM or a self-made district map has to be created with JSOM or geojson.io and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. --Renek78 (talk) 22:16, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank Renek78 to share geojson.io. I have try draw map(draw a poly gon) about Hyde Park, and upload to Wikimedia Commons, Am I doing is this right?--Yuriy kosygin (talk) 18:09, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Yuriy kosygin, looks good! I personally add all of the polygons into one GeoJSON, but this way also works. --Renek78 (talk) 19:15, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Anyone willing to work on this? --Traveler100 (talk) 06:33, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

@Traveler100, Renek78: Sorry... I only draw to Downtown, UT and the Drag, and Hyde Park & North Loop districts map of Austin, but I don't know how to draw East Austin, Northwest Austin, and South Austin districts map of Austin... Hi Renek78, Can you help draw to East Austin, Northwest Austin, and South Austin districts map of Austin?(see the map) --Yuriy kosygin (talk) 15:19, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

There is a default pagebanner for destinations but there are also versions for continents, etc., like this banner. Should we use the regional defaults or the world default for our articles? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:14, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Pagebanner default.jpg is (sadly) automagically entered when creating a new stub. I've considered bringing this up before because automatically inserting this makes it to where we cannot accept banners defined on Wikidata linked by other language editions, which is a shame. The code is there in {{Pagebanner}} to work perfectly fine with the regional banners, and it needs just a little bit of code to work out which one to show if no custom one is entered (which can be achieved through {{IsIn}}, for example). I personally like the idea of regional differences (they may not be noticeable if you don't look at it, but it adds a nice touch nonetheless), it's just that the tools we have created over time make it an unused feature. I'd be supportive of wiping Pagebanner default.jpg from every instance of pagebanner and automatically make the pagebanner template work out which banner to show. I don't think I possess the knowledge or tools to switch this myself. If I could, I would have mentioned this a long time ago. -- Wauteurz (talk) 19:25, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

IMO the "global default banner" is better than no banner at all, and if you can't remember the file name for the "local default banner", I think it's useful that the global version is automatically added. Just my opinion. ϒψιλον (talk) 19:32, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Strongly agree with User:Wauteurz. Although I have been told that we do like to have custom banners defined locally here, there's no reason for that to be the case with generic banners, which the template handles on its own. @Ypsilon: You don't have to remember anything. The template does the appropriate regional variation for you. ARR8 (talk) 19:56, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

No, in the source code it's still showing up red, unfortunately. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:05, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

@SelfieCity: I can't say I've heard this before. What are you doing to get that result? Just adding the template without parameters?

@Ypsilon: {{Pagebanner}} should work to display the standard banner for Mena-asia if you enter {{Pagebanner|Asia}}. From my brief testing using page previews, this does work. You can type in the continent or region rather than having to remember the filename. Some of the options include Asia, Europe, North-Africa, TT, Itinerary, Diving, Phrasebook, New Zealand, Australia, Caribbean and North America.

@ARR8: There is a preference to locally define banners, I know that from experience, but there are some good banners out there on other language projects. It's a waste of time if we'd not accept those in where they are already available. If they suck, then we can always replace them, but I'd argue that the Pagebanner is essential to Wikivoyage's identity, and that having a colourful custom one is infinitely better than having the default banner. Besides, there aren't that many destinations that had a custom banner. I've seen at most 20 custom ones when creating the 750 banners I have made, and 20 is a high estimate, I'm sure. If that number is representative, then we're talking about 302 existing banners that would be imported. Besides, there surely is a way to group that into a category for "Pagebanner fetched from Wikidata" if that doesn't happen yet, just so these banners can be easily reviewed at one point or another. -- Wauteurz (talk) 20:06, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

@Wauteurz: Yes. I'm pretty sure we're in complete agreement; I was told about the practice for custom banners here in my first post to the Pub. I still think we should switch to Wikidata-only definitions at some point in the future, maybe when concerns about reliability of Wikidata are addressed. Either way, I think it would be great to passively benefit from the work of other WV languages and vice-versa. ARR8 (talk) 20:25, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Actually, seems there's nothing to worry about. Dunkirk, right now, has "Pagebanner default.jpg" defined, but is displaying a banner from Wikidata. I was going to propose changing the article skeleton templates to remove the pagebanner definition, but don't see a good reason now. ARR8 (talk) 20:27, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

@ARR8: I'm a bit confused by Dunkirk right now. If locally defining banners has a priority, then why doesn't specifying a default banner have priority over Wikidata? A custom locally defined banner has priority over Wikidata at the least, so I'm guessing that a "Any banner is better than a default banner"-mindset is at play here?

As for changing the skeleton: The only reason I can think of to remove Pagebanner default.jpg would be to allow the template to automatically insert the appropriate regional pagebanner. I'm not sure the template is capable of figuring out which one should be displayed at this time though, but I don't think that's impossible to implement. If we don't, then we might as well toss the regional default banners, since no-one will bother using them if they aren't able to be inserted through skeletons, and I don't think many people are aware of these regional default banners existing in the first place. If anything, a little drop-down menu next to the skeleton buttons could help, which lets you select the continent and change the pagebanner default on that basis. -- Wauteurz (talk) 21:18, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Taking a look at the code now, seems that's exactly the case. If any of a few predefined "default banners" are set, it will overwrite them with the WD property if it exists. This is also true for shortcuts like Asia, Africa, Caribbean, etc. Given the choices you mentioned, it seems to me it would be best to implement the location logic, as trying to teach everyone, including new editors, about these shortcuts might be an uphill battle, and selection tools for skeletons might not even be used if people are just copy-pasting them. ARR8 (talk) 21:31, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

I had the same issue before with banners. The edit history of Motorcycle speedway shows the problems I had with this, and I eventually brought it up in the Pub and learned that sometimes you had to edit Wikidata to solve the problem. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:57, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

@ARR8, SelfieCity: I've previously edited {{Pagebanner/sandbox}} to make the first switch function allow for a bit more of an overview, but I've gone ahead and pushed two more changes to it now. First of all, the first switch function now auto-converts the first parameter (i.e., the image you enter as banner or the short-cut for a default banner) to lowercase, so that {{Pagebanner|Asia}} works as it did, but {{Pagebanner|asia}}, {{Pagebanner|AsIa}}, {{Pagebanner|ASIA}} (with any capitalisation) now gives the same result: the meno-asia default banner. Idem dito was done for the other default banners. Secondly, I removed the default banners from the first switch function so that they don't force a fetch from Wikidata. This should resolve everything. A page preview of Dunkirk with {{Pagebanner/sandbox|Pagebanner default.jpg|unesco=true}} now returns the desired default banner. I'd suggest we wait for some of the more frequent/notable editors to {{Pagebanner}} to add their ten cents on whether or not Wikidata should be preferred over a default banner or not (@Wrh2, Shaundd, WOSlinker:) before we get an admin to push the changes to the template proper. -- Wauteurz (talk) 22:31, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

I always add a space after headings if I'm editing the source. Do you have to do that? I thought I read that somewhere in the manual of style, but that might have not even been on Wikivoyage. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:25, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

A space character after last equal sign (=) - No; if you are talking about a newline after a heading, for readability it would be nice to do - not necessary though as needed newline is taken care of... A newline after listings is ok to do as well for visual editorial ease and listing separation but also not necessary when using the mediawiki editor. -- Matroc (talk) 05:06, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I did not make my original comment clear; I am talking about a newline after the heading. Thanks for the answer. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:44, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

I think newlines are nice around templates and images, to separate them from the text. If the lines happens to be the same length it is otherwise easy to miss, especially frustrating when you see something in a diff or the article itself and cannot find the right place in the section when you try to edit it (on WP the typical problem is the end of the fact box template, here I think the problem is smaller, but I still like the newlines for clarity).

For list items there is a problem: if you put a newline between items MediaWiki starts a new list. The break is usually not visible, but speech synthesizers usually make it audible. If the listings end with "}}" on its own line, that is enough for separation.

Newline should note be between listings, as LPfi point out, it starts a new list which for people using browsers for the blind could cause unnecessary complication when being verbalised. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:45, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

If all requests for user rights are made on that page (I couldn't find any others), then we could always rename the page to "Requests for user rights" or something similarly generic. But mostly I think that the page title shouldn't be a big deal. If you don't already know where to make your request for buro rights, then you probably shouldn't be making the request anyway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web[edit]

Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web

Please help translate to your language

Example of improvements

Hello,

In a few weeks the Readers web team will be changing how some templates look on the mobile web site. We will make these templates more noticeable when viewing the article. We ask for your help in updating any templates that don't look correct.

What kind of templates? Specifically templates that notify readers and contributors about issues with the content of an article – the text and information in the article. Examples like Template:Unreferenced or Template:More citations needed. Right now these notifications are hidden behind a link under the title of an article. We will format templates like these (mostly those that use Template:Ambox or message box templates in general) to show a short summary under the page title. You can tap on the "Learn more" link to get more information.

Is this about WV or WP? w:Template:Unreferenced and w:Template:More citations needed do not exist on Wikivoyage. Please see Wikivoyage:Welcome, Wikipedians: specifically the bit that says "Wikivoyage articles use no references. It's fine to point to authoritative primary source external sites for additional information (eg. visa sections are usually linked into the country's immigration website), but individual claims are not referenced. If a claim is dubious or in dispute, it's best to hammer out a reworded consensus on the Talk page, not try to 'prove' that it's true." K7L (talk) 19:56, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

It looks like Chris got stuck in the multi-day meeting about the wishlist proposals. They have 300+ to process before the end of the week.

This isn't my project, but: AFAICT this change will technically affect all sites, but the practical effects here should be small. Tech folks might want to review the linked information on ambox templates. For the rest of us, if, a few weeks from now, you see some boring maintenance template appearing on the mobile site, and you don't want think casual readers should be seeing it (nearly all editors use the desktop site), then this change is why, and if we ping Chris about it, he should be able to help us figure out how to fix it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:19, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

SelfieCity just posted this on Talk:Buffalo after what I gather is a temporary slushing of its starnom. I've never actually seen this template in the wild before - in general, an article has almost always been either a full-fledged nominee or nothing - and I have to say I object to some of its language, specifically that Star articles need "to perfectly match the Manual of style" (emphasis in original). mos says "[o]ur manual of style is a collection of rules of thumb and guidelines", not carved-in-stone policy. If an article contravenes mos in a way that can be demonstrated to work better or make more sense, we've always held it to be Star-worthy regardless. The text of the template should reflect that. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:50, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm just doing what it says to do at Wikivoyage:Star nominations#Failed nominations. But I can understand that there would be reason to change it. Because saying that something has to be perfect invites people to say, "Well, I don't quite like this" or, "This could be just a little better" and the result is a lot of criticism and not much work done. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:53, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I wasn't calling you out for doing anything wrong, just pinged you so you'd see this thread and maybe share your thoughts (which you did). -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:11, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I also think there is a problem with "perfectly". A few misformatting times or phone numbers, or an intentional deviation from our style because it suits the destination to do so, shouldn't prevent an article from being a star. I realise this isn't the place to propose a change, but since we're talking about it, would a proposal to change this to "to closely match the Manual of style" get support? We do want to avoid situations like Windsor (Ontario), which was riddled with formatting errors when it was nominated (and outdated listings, and clumsy text). Ground Zero (talk) 04:38, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I can't imagine anyone would disagree with a change to "closely" matches our mos. Indeed, that is a more accurate description of the star-criteria anyway. JuliasTravels (talk) 11:02, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't think "closely" is nearly good enough for a Star. "Perfectly" may be overdoing it, though that's arguable. How about "very closely matches"? Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:22, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Haha, alright, strike my comment :-) Very closely (or a similar wording) would be fine for me too (even though I wouldn't read "closely" as leaving all that much space either, but that might just be me). JuliasTravels (talk) 11:32, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

The way I see it is that Guide articles need to closely follow the Manual of style, so Star articles would have to follow it really closely. And it's very nice to see you here. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:35, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I would say though, that if something is so close to star status that it literally just has "a few misformatted times", it would be a failure on our part to let such a nomination get slushed rather than a failure of the policy. I sort of see the "perfectly" as a way to ensure that an article is fully scrutinized, so that in a case like the time-formatting mentioned, we actually fix it rather than saying "Meh, it CLOSELY matches, so just make it a star." That's just as bad as slushing it. It also forces any abnormalities to be justified as part of the nomination (if it's not already justified in a Talk discussion) which can be vital in determining if something is relevant for precedent or not. I don't think it's valid anyway for someone to just say "I don't like this" or "It could be better". If a user is unable to actually pinpoint areas to improve and why they are inaccurate/hard to understand/too encyclopedic/etc. then it is an invalid critique, just like saying "I don't like it" is not a valid reason to oppose a Destination of the Month nomination. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 12:37, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Agreed. Although, just because an argument isn't valid doesn't mean that people don't make it. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:03, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree, too. But I'm not really clear on why we're debating this. Does this reflect the actual nature of discussions in Starnom threads? Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:44, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

It reflects some of the arguments I had made about Buffalo's starnom, and will probably make again when it's revived. As for the template itself, Wikivoyage:City guide status says that Star articles' "[l]ayout and listing formats either match the manual of style exactly or are the exception that proves the rule", and I think that wording or some variation on it would be a fine replacement for the current text. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:47, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

By way of getting this done, I've taken the word exactly from the quotation that Andre provided here, and swapped it into the template, in place of perfectly. If the MOS has a line about exceptions, then we can safely call this one Done and sweep this discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:06, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don't see any difference between "exactly" and "perfectly". What would you say is the difference? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:40, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

The main difference that I see is that the one word is taken from the requirements, and the other isn't. Additionally, "perfection" isn't a comfortable concept in wiki culture, as it implies that subsequent edits will make things worse. I'd personally be happy with removing both adverbs, but that idea was not discussed here, and there did seem to be more support for "exactly" than for "perfectly". WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:05, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Understood. I suggested a different form of words above, but I don't think the exact wording of the template matters enough for me to debate it further. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:36, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

By no means would I accuse this of being vandalism or anything, but I'm a little taken aback by this. Is it extreme inflation or is this an IP address trying to create problems? I think the first is quite likely, but I think it's best to make sure.

If the inflation is this bad, what's the rest of our Argentina articles like? Could there possibly be some sort of currency template created that automatically adjusts for inflation for these kinds of places? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 03:28, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Seems plausible to me. Argentina has had a lot of inflation and currency fluctuation in recent years (see Argentina#Buy), and some of the prices in question hadn't been updated since well before the fork. When I was traveling in Argentina last year, I found that many of the prices on Wikivoyage were way out of date. This is a reason why it's important to attach dates to prices when adding them to articles, especially in countries like Argentina with unstable currencies. —Granger (talk·contribs) 03:41, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, and in these countries expensive/imported products and services, and ones that are used by visitors, are usually priced in some hard currency (usually USD). ϒψιλον (talk) 14:11, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for this information, but still no feedback for some sort of template that used the changes with inflation to update pricing information. Perhaps something similar to Template:Populationof would be good. But of course, it would be quite a lot of work. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:27, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

In no way should we use any template that automatically assumes prices increase at the rate of inflation. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:38, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Exactly. Inflation (or in depressions, deflation) is an average of changes in price. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:49, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

And different types of products behave differently, in ways that are hard to guess without some understanding of the local market and of the reasons for the current inflation. --LPfi (talk) 21:01, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

This one seems harmless, but does it fit better on Wikivoyage:Joke articles (which are usually the 1 April featured destinations, as a special collection) or on BJAODN's subpages? K7L (talk) 22:36, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

I think the article's location on the website is okay currently. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:38, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Would like a second opinion but I believe the all text for the Wikivoyage Canoa and the corresponding Wikipedia page Canoa are for the town in the Canton of San Vicente in the Manabí Province of Ecuador. But the coordinated for both as well as the wikidata page are incorrectly set to Panama, in a location I cannot find anything of this name, even though there are a few, Canoa (disambiguation). --Traveler100 (talk) 15:57, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

I have edited the wikidata entry, removing references to other places of the same name. --Traveler100 (talk) 20:20, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

The Community Wishlist Survey. Please help translate to your language.

Hey everyone,

The Community Wishlist Survey is the process when the Wikimedia communities decide what the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech should work on over the next year.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. The communities have now posted a long list of technical proposals. You can vote on the proposals from now until 30 November. You can read more on the wishlist survey page.

Now is a good time for me to mention Doc James' proposal on Wikidata in watchlists here, which could use some more support and would benefit us (mostly for coordinates and pagebanners). I'd urge anyone here who's participating in the survey to support this proposal. Getting this implemented is also a prerequisite, I think, to allowing us to more closely monitor changes to listings' Wikidata parameters. ARR8 (talk) 18:23, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Are we allowed to vote to support multiple proposals? I already voted to support showing locations on dynamic maps. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:36, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, of course. Some people support almost every proposal. ARR8 (talk) 18:50, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

As I understand it, it would work like this: if you had United States of America on your Wikivoyage watchlist, and the Wikidata entry for "United States of America" was edited, it would show up on your Wikivoyage watchlist. That would be a good thing. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:58, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes and no. That functionality already exits ([1]). As that link shows, though, the majority of Wikidata edits (marked D) relate to text in other languages, and not content, and even the content changes that show up are irrelevant to most projects. This would filter it to relevant content changes only. ARR8 (talk) 19:06, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Makes sense. However, Recent Changes and the Watchlist are two different things. Does this proposal apply to both or just the Watchlist? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:09, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

I believe the two use the same system. The devs can't change one without changing the other. ARR8 (talk) 19:10, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

They can handle them separately, but it's generally a bad idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:16, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I see. Thanks. As you know, I voted "support". It is not a big issue for me, but still good enough to support. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:19, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Any other proposals that will directly improve this project that we should be supporting? OhanaUnitedTalk page 03:43, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

So, there's a discussion (such as it is) over at Piedmont - because it's a very small town with very little outside of houses, and it's surrounded on all sides by Oakland - which is a full-sized city with a lot of work put into it. The very few details will be very simple to add to Oakland's listing, so.... Now what? L. Challenger (talk) 02:13, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to do this - and I'm not sure I have the permissions needed to do it myself - I can do a Move, but it only works if I am moving it to either a redirect or a blank unedited page. L. Challenger (talk) 10:38, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

It also does not help matters that there's really nothing on Piedmont's side to merge - there's a note about what is a small city park, and there's some very outdated information on transit to and from the place - I am thinking that it's just going to wind up being a redirect to Oakland, since there's zero usable travel info to merge to be perfectly honest. L. Challenger (talk) 10:59, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

I had a feeling that might be the case. In that case, just replace the content of the Piedmont article with "#REDIRECT[[Oakland]]". —Granger (talk·contribs) 11:08, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

There is a gadget at w:User:MusikAnimal/confirmationRollback-mobile that makes a confirmation required before performing a rollback on a mobile device, to avoid accidental rollbacks. This is enabled by default for all users on WP under user "Preferences" > "Gadgets". Maybe we should install it and enable it by default on WV. Alternatively, users can install it on their Meta-Wiki global.js for use on all Wikimedia wikis. Maybe it can also be installed in a js for WV only (I don't know much about this sort of thing). Nurg (talk) 03:25, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Scripts are either purely local or entirely global. There's no intermediate option (like all the Wikivoyages but not the other projects). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:07, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

I'd support making this the default on WV. The reason I don't edit WV on mobile now (desktop instead) is due to accidental rollbacks. Or in the previous comment do you mean that it is impossible to do so? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:53, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I think WhatamIdoing meant that we could do it on the English WV, but it wouldn't apply to other WVs. So where my original post said "WV", read "English WV", and where I said "WP", I should have said "English WP". Nurg (talk) 21:45, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Flattered to hear you are interested in my script! :) Just a small note -- in the gadget's source, you might consider loading enwiki's gadget with mw.loader.load('https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&title=MediaWiki:Gadget-confirmationRollback-mobile.js'); so that you get free updates, though such updates will be rare. Kind regards, — MusikAnimaltalk 05:26, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Added the gadget and enabled it by default. Please, check whether it works as expected. --Alexander (talk) 08:13, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

It seems to work nicely. Thank you for doing that. Ground Zero (talk) 21:54, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

To any admin: I've requested that the changes be linked to the Listing Editor Beta gadget, which is currently useless, prior to discussion, so that others could test the new editor without creating JS files. Hopefully this can be done; since the gadget currently doesn't do anything, I can't think of a reason not to do it. ARR8 (talk) 04:34, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

As the focus seems to be on various assemblies, I've changed the lede a bit.. If someone wants to add China I think this is almost ready to be given another look. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:43, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

You can't put P inside BDI, otherwise you get document structuring issues, and LintErrors, the Listing template cannot cope with multi-line content unless it's been substantially updated since I last used it.

Can someone repair the Listings Editor so it doesn't generate "badly structured" HTML, which the contributor claims is the output from the Listings editor?
ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:58, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

I do not really understand the problem. HTML makes a difference between two levels of elements: you cannot put a <div> in a paragraph, but have to use <span> instead – and you cannot have a paragraph in a paragraph. Our listings are formatted as paragraphs, so it is natural they cannot contain paragraphs. Newlines (<br>) in the "content" are a workaround that works most of the time. Where you really want several paragraphs, our style guide recommends a subsection instead of trying to shoehorn them into a listing. Are there some problems with those solutions? --LPfi (talk) 14:01, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

I know that, in the edit above the contributor concerned reverted my conversion of P tags to BR claiming that was the "editor default". Perhaps you can convince them just because it's the editor default doesn't make it the correct approach? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:47, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

So the editor treats a double newline as <P>? That should be fixed, yes. People entering <P> by hand probably understand the issue by your just telling about it (and with the "editor default" changed, there should be no conflict). --LPfi (talk) 11:56, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I think it's that they are using the listing editor, which is generating <P> automatically, and not understanding why these where converted to <br /><br />, Perhaps you could explain it to them better than I could? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:06, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Unless they take the time to answer (or ask for more information) I suppose it is not worth trying to explain more than what we have written here. --LPfi (talk) 20:02, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

It's only entries they have which are now holding up mainspace being relatively free from LintErrors.. I am not going to attempt to fix talk pages as I lack the skill to handle that. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:08, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

in my userspace listing editor, per your request. I'm currently holding a discussion on changes to the listing editor over at Wikivoyage talk:Listing editor, which I mentioned above. This particular change is currently in my userspace, like I said, but it will be part of the ListingEditor Beta gadget, where many other changes already are, pretty soon. After a period of testing, it will hopefully be the new default, along with the rest of the changes made so far.

If you have any other suggestions for or thoughts on the listing editor, please post them there. This applies to everyone reading this. ARR8 (talk) 00:36, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I hesitate to bring this up because User:Inferno986return is clearly putting a lot of effort into this project, but I don't think it's a good idea, and I'd like to get the community's views on it. S/he is adding coloured icons to London articles to indicate the Underground lines on which stations are located where the stations are identified in listings (for example, City of London). I think we have to balance the information added by adding these icons against its impact the visual appeal of the article.

To me, and maybe it's just me, this makes the article harder to scroll through and read because of the jumble of colours. I thought we had a general policy against adding too many symbols to text, but I can't find it.

Was there a discussion that I missed about this, and is there a consensus that this is the direction we want to go in? If not, do others like this innovation or not like it? Ground Zero (talk) 12:30, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Commerical travel guides to london that Ive encountered use tube station references a lot, and prior to the updates the tube station name was what was given. I didn't have an issue with that. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:52, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Ground Zero: I take it we're talking about {{Station}} and {{Rint}} here. We've had a discussion about those templates here back in March. I didn't get a lot of feedback on it, but the addition of many colours was one of the issues we encountered (see also 1, 2, 3 for the earlier discussions). To solve this, we decided to make the route label that RINT prints smaller. I'm not blind to the issue you're encountering here, and it is justified, but in my honest opinion, if Station is an issue, then dynamic maps such as the one for the City of London would be an issue as well.

As for how to solve this: RINT (and by extension Station) weren't supposed to be used all over a template, or at least, not in my vision. Again, referring to the City of London, we can opt to remove the instances of RINT from the individual listings leaving just the name and moving the colourfulness of RINT to the 'By tube' section. It's a bit late now to revoke RINT, and I wasn't planning on doing that. I'm not sure how long you've been hesitant about bringing this up, but a better time would have been back in April when you swept the discussion from the pub. A concrete consensus was never reached, but I never heard anyone voice an opinion against RINT and Station, hence they are now in proper usage. -- Wauteurz (talk) 16:23, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Not an easy one this. Having next to a POI information on which tube station to get out at is a very useful thing for a visitor. Saves having to look at a secondary map and work things out. So from that point of view I would say keep as is useful to the traveler. However I agree on PC/laptop browser the colouring is a but overwhelming. Interestingly on mobile, where it would mostly be used, it does not look so bad. My suggestion is make the icons a little smaller. Could consider some smart dynamic mouse over option, like hover over tube station name then displays the tube lines. --Traveler100 (talk) 16:55, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

This isn't terribly different from what we have already been doing, for a long time and uncontroversially, with subway information in the NYC district articles. I think the aesthetic concerns are minor compared to the practical usefulness of including this information. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:31, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Traveler100: Mouseovers may work for PC, but wouldn't work on mobile. People would have to know that they have to tap the station to find out what lines connect to that station. Nonetheless, I'm tagging Andree.sk, since they did nearly all of the work on {{Station}}, which would be the template with this function. I can, however, demonstrate the difference between the current size of RINT and a possible smaller size: CIRCIR. It doesn't look bad, but looks worse as soon as you enter it in Station (or so it does by my opinion): Example BAKCIRH&C, my main issue being that the smaller instances of RINT are impossible to center vertically (or to my knowledge at least). The vertical alignment to the bottom of the span in {{Station}} is what I find unappealing about this option. -- Wauteurz (talk) 17:34, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

My intention was to make the listings more intuitive by showing line connections for each listing's tube station. Even as a Brit myself I am unaware of which lines are connected to which station (I was also unaware prior to editing Wikivoyage that the Waterloo & City line even existed). However I agree it does potentially add clutter to each listing. Perhaps a possible solution is to add the RINT icons to the 'By Tube' section with anchor links in the listing to each section so that you can click to go up the page. As a visual learner myself I do like the icons and would like to include them in some capacity to each London article and potentially other cities abroad. Inferno986return (talk) 17:43, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Wauteurz: This is the first time that I have seen RINT and Station being used so extensively in an article, to the point where I think it is an issue worth raising. I did not read the previous discussion as I am not technically-oriented. I do sweep the pub to help discussions remain focussed on current issues. Sweeping the pub does not mean picking up each piece of paper and reading it before putting it into the bin. If sweeping the pub means I can no longer raise any questions about any of the issues, then I guess I shouldn't sweep the pub, but leave it to others who have the time and interest to read everything, and are willing to accept the accountability risk. If such people exist. Using the fact that I swept the pub to challenge my raising the issue is, I think, poor form.

My concern seems to be shared, at least in part, by some other people, and not at all by others. There are valid arguments on both sides. I think it would be useful to wait to get more views to see what the consensus is. Ground Zero (talk) 19:05, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Ground Zero: My apologies, reading back what I wrote before is, put lightly, aggressive if anything. I didn't intent to make it sound like this was something you did wrong, nor do I think that such is the case. I meant to give you a heads-up about there having been discussions before and remarking that you might have come across it before. Without knowing my intent, that did not show in text. Again, my apologies.

That aside, I am more than happy to get you up to speed about anything you need to know about RINT. I can't say the same about Station (Andree made that alongside RINT and we were pretty hands-off about what either of us were doing), but if needs be, I'm sure I can put the workings of the template into common English. I'm happy to have this discussion, even if I would have been happier to have had this discussion half a year ago. If people have concerns or are running into issues, then we need to discuss how to solve that, and it's better to do that late than not at all. -- Wauteurz (talk) 19:17, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

{{station}} is pretty trivial actually, it just adds a almost-invisible box and acts as a shortcut to {{rint}}. And mainly - it could help keeping the style same across articles. We didn't conclude to any visual styling, so it is what it is... Regarding the current topic, I guess the main issue is that while most cities have simple 1/2-character line names (like A), London has these long names which really interfere (more). I'd probably vote for the smaller icons, even with the bad alignment (for the time being). -- andree.sk(talk) 20:27, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

London used to have four symbols the way I initially designed it, and dropping it down to just two would most likely make it loose all meaning. The idea of RINT was to do away with loads of images, but I suggest that we make an exception for London, being a somewhat special case. I suggest that we switch back to what was used in the original Rail-interchange template and go with the SVG roundels found here instead, which would print as Farringdon . Alternatively Farringdon is an option as well, the only difference being the text on the roundels which isn't even readable at 20 pixels. This doesn't remove the colours, but makes them less wide and therefore makes them occupy less of the page. -- Wauteurz (talk) 21:22, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

I am not keen on the look of City of London at the moment. It seems odd that the Get in - By tube section doesn't have the line colours, but these appear in the listings. In the case of a central district it might be better to give full details of which lines each station is on in Get in (aswell as more info on each station - does it have a lift etc), and then just give the station with each listing. In a central district most readers will just take a tube into the district then walk between individual sights. However in a much larger outer district like London/North the lines would be useful. AlasdairW (talk) 21:52, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

I kind of like this approach. It should make it easier to figure out what's easily accessible from where you are. (The roundels are pretty, but impossible if you're color blind.)

Recently, I've been wondering why travel guides (not just us) aren't more oriented towards mass transit. Given how intimidating it can be to change lines in an unfamiliar city (or inefficient, in some cities), it seems like you ought to be able to figure out what lines run to the airport and/or what line(s) run to your main destination, and find a list of hotels, restaurants, etc., along those lines. For example, surely I could find a hotel, a couple of places to eat, and a few interesting things to look at right along the Piccadilly line. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:46, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ It seems that there is general support for keeping the icons in some form, although some share my concern about clutter. Wauteurz, I appreciate the effort you've put into creating alternatives, but I agree that the roundels don't work very well as you'd really have to know the line colours to be able to read them. The capsules are more effective at conveying the information. I do like AlistairW's proposal of keeping the capsules in the Get in section for Central London articles, and not including the in the listings. I think that achieves a good balance. Would you be comfortable with that approach? Ground Zero (talk) 01:23, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

You want them in ==Get in==, but not in ==Get around== (where the map with the colored lines is)? I'd rather see them everywhere, but if we decided to compromise on parts of the article, then I don't think that excluding them from the map section would be desirable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:34, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I am happy for them also to be used in ==Get around==. Earlier I said ==Get in==, because in the specific case of City of London, all the tube stations are listed there. I am also happy for them to be used in other listings of larger districts, the issue is with compact central districts that no two listings are more than about 30 minutes walk apart. If it takes less than 20 minutes to walk between two places it is quicker to walk than take the tube. When I was visiting the City of London, my main consideration in choosing which tube lines and station to use was where I was coming from. AlasdairW (talk) 19:31, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I'd personally argue to put them in Get around as well, and list an overview of the lines as they are in that district. I may draw up the HTML behind that later, but in essence, it would be a glorified Routebox with up to ten or so stations/stops and the adjacent districts. @Ground Zero: Like I said before: RINT was originally supposed to be used in routeboxes, but were swiftly moved to {{Station}} during development of both templates. The last place they were to be used for would have been Sleep, Eat and Buy listings. If possible though, I'd like to see this discussion carry on to generate some guidelines for when to and when not to use RINT, or at least find out where the border is between too many and a good usage of RINT labels. In any case, I'll revisit my previous statement about not liking the smaller icons ( CIR as opposed to CIR). Sure, they may be a bit off in {{Station}}, but we can work on that. In any case, I'd like to know if there's a wish for a template like described above in this comment: A line overview with up to X amount of stations. If so, I'd happily draft up something for that, even if it would only be used in the district articles of cities with dense networks, such as London and Paris. -- Wauteurz (talk) 20:50, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and started a vote on changing the size of RINT on its discussion page. I'd appreciate it if those involved here would also mark their opinions there. -- Wauteurz (talk) 21:02, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

In the category of "It helps if you pay attention": Wauteurz, earlier I didn't notice that the roundels were accompanied by the line of the name (spelled out in text, right there before the icons). I therefore withdraw any objection to that approach. It might actually be better than an abbreviation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

My job at WMF is to build a great API that makes it easy for third-party developers to make apps and web sites that use information from Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, and all the other WMF sites. I'm especially interested in encouraging developers to add editing capabilities to their tools so that their users are first-class participants in our collaborative projects.

What does this mean for Wikivoyage? I'm not sure. My work at the WMF doesn't focus on Wikivoyage. But my hope is that the work I do will help more contributors to participate and share their knowledge here. I especially hope that I can help those apps that use WV data dumps to show static content to change to a more read-write model. ---EvanProdromou (talk) 21:09, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

@EvanProdromou: Are we able to do a traceback on which sites or apps use WV data dumps? Then we have a better idea why they are using our data. OhanaUnitedTalk page 07:33, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Would it be practical to use Git or some other version control system (maybe even a purpose-built one?) to drive a wiki? That would let mirror sites use Git operations to stay up to date & instead of the current sandboxes in user space, one could have one's own tree for experiments.

It might also allow better filtering of random contributions, newbie mistakes, spam and/or vandalism before they appear in main space. That is really tricky, though. w:Citizendium was a mostly well-intentioned project trying to do something like that, but it failed miserably by getting some of the mechanisms wrong. Pashley (talk) 11:36, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Congratulations! The best data that Wikivoyage can offer third-party developers, besides the travel guide itself, might be the listings. A Russian Wikivoyager and I are maintaining this CSV database of Wikivoyage listings, feel free to have a look. There is even a API to query it, but I am sure you could do better if worth the hassle. My personal opinion is that all of this data should go into Wikidata, but I don't see that happening within 10 years, even if everyone shared my opinion, which is not the case :-) Cheers! Syced (talk) 07:21, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

City-busz has been putting a lot of good work into Hungarian articles. It might be a good idea to create a Hungarian expedition to help in the process of making Hungary articles better. What do people think about this? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:08, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

I'll create a page with some stats. See how it looks. --Traveler100 (talk) 16:59, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

It's occurred to me that I haven't actually announced here that the changes to the listing editor can be tested with the Listing Editor2 Beta gadget. So, the listing editor changes can be tested with the Listing Editor2 Beta gadget, in the WV preferences.

Feedback, especially complaints or inconveniences, would be critical now, because, unless anyone complains, in two weeks, I will request it to be set as the new sitewide default. Since I have implemented, in some form, everything that has been suggested to me for the editor, and some things that haven't, and have received no further feedback, that should mean that either the changes are perfect and no one would have any reason to oppose them, or they're not perfect and some people haven't looked at it it.

Since I'm not enough of an egotist to think my work is perfect, I'll put out another call here for people, in addition to the three of you who enabled the gadget, to test the changes and leave some feedback. Even a quick statement of "sure, looks fine" would be helpful for me to get a picture of whether people implicitly support the changes or just don't know about them. Thanks, ARR8 (talk) 21:17, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

We're having a lively discussion on the topic of walking tours at Wikivoyage talk:Listings#Revisit ban on listing free walking tours? I'd like wider participation because there may be a consensus for some kind of change starting to develop, and I think it's important for more people, especially long-timers who remember what things were like before the tour policy was instituted, to take part. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:22, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I've noticed over the past week, many, many revisions being hidden with references to "policies" from WP and peoples user space. Has there been a discussion on hiding revisions here that I have missed? Any pointers? Seems a bit overkill to me. --Inas (talk) 08:29, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Inas, this step has been taken in response to the recent bout of vandalism. There was a discussion amongst admins about making vandals' edits not visible in order to reduce the "rewards" to vandalism. Ground Zero (talk) 13:14, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I would support removing visibility when specific peoples details are mentioned but not sure about other edits. Not being able to see what a vandal has done means no one else can check the judgement of the person who hide it or help spot more subtle vandals edit patterns. Not questioning the judgement of current visibility changes but it does open up the system to a personal campaign of an admin. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:45, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm getting a little bit sick of the armchair quarterbacking from certain fellow admins, whether it be hassling me about and/or outright reverting my reversion of Telstra vandalism based on their own minority opinion that it's no longer worthwhile to continue enforcing the userban, or mischaracterizing my efforts to combat the current crop of vandalism as some sort of personal vendetta. Anyone who had objections to the current course of action had ample opportunity to register their opposition, and anyone who thinks I have poor judgment is welcome to try to get me desysopped, given that I probably shouldn't be an admin if I'm that untrustworthy. Failing that, either help clean up after the vandals or don't, but if you're not going to pitch in, at least don't try to start trouble with those who are. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Wow, do other feel my contributions (which includes a lot of rollbacks of vandalism and edits of touts) are not welcome? Sorry for raising a question to a more important admin person. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

That's a strawman. I never said your contributions were unwelcome, in vandalism abatement or any other field, and you know that. All I said was that anyone who wants to know the reason for the revision deletions, or who objected to them, had ample opportunity to make their voices heard. Your contribution history shows plenty of activity since November 25, including at the Pub, so it's reasonable to presume you saw the call for administrator attention on that date, and given your history of ample participation at Wikivoyage:Vandalism in progress, it's also reasonable to presume you were aware that we've concluded that many issues related to vandalism are best not discussed where prying eyes can see. Again, if you chose not to participate in those discussions, that's perfectly all right, but calling foul at the eleventh hour as if all this had been secretly plotted and schemed behind your back is disingenuous and unconstructive. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:47, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Please don't paint this as some kind of admin v admin feud. It isn't. If there was a consensus built and a policy change to delete/hide vandalism revisions, then point me to it and this discussion is over. Otherwise, I'd suggest that deleting revisions (in the absence of doxing, and similar) is the antithesis to what a wiki is all about, and it should stop, please. --Inas (talk) 21:43, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Inas- Special:AbuseFilter/25, in the "Notes" section. As for "admin v admin feuds", I'm painting this as one because it is one. I'm generally not inclined to unnecessarily escalate situations like this, but if you want an exhaustive history of Traveler100's bad blood towards me, I'd be happy to give you one. One thing I will not do, though, is stand idly by while my motivations as an administrator and bureaucrat are impugned. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:00, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

As my final comment. I have not intended any bad blood to AndreCarrotflower or any other contributor, sorry if it was interpreted that way. Sometimes I disagree with an action or view and sometime I agree with them. Others undo my edits and disagree with some of my proposals, that is wiki. As for not contributing to the current discussion on vandals I have to say simple did not have the time to follow every link and read every talk page discussion. If asking a question or having a different view from the bureaucrat of the site gets this response I am only sad. --Traveler100 (talk) 22:43, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

AndreCarrotflower, please try not to take this personally—we're all on the same team here. I don't doubt that everyone involved has the best of intentions, though I am concerned about the lack of transparency with which this decision was made. (Was consensus reached to start revision-deleting vandalism? I saw one email but no other discussion that I can remember.) The strategy does seem to be somewhat successful so far, though (knock on wood). —Granger (talk·contribs) 00:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

While usually I am all in favour of developing a consensus and keeping discussions open and transparent, given the amount of time and energy admins have had to use up fighting off the recent rounds of vandalism, I think that Andre's extraordinary measures were warranted. Ground Zero (talk) 01:23, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree with this, and I fail to see any important reason for not continuing with this policy. If other admins want to see the usernames of the vandals who made the edits, you can do that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:45, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Although I appreciate the efforts of those who invest large amounts of time combating vandalism, I think perhaps some have become too engaged in the fight. There is serious damage that is done to our wiki, when we hide and delete revisions and articles rather than reverting them. It's not the way a wiki is supposed to work. --Inas (talk) 08:37, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

What's the problem with denying recognition for vandals and vandalism? Please explain what important thing is lost this way. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:41, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

[outdent]
On sv-wp we avoid revision deletions because non-admins cannot see the target was a vandal. It could equally well be a well-intending user with opposing viewpoints being quieted. I think this issue is much smaller on a travel wiki than on an encyclopaedia, but openness is a virtue. I trust the admins making the decision, but I still feel it should not be taken light-hearted. --LPfi (talk) 13:52, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi all, I want to flag an issue with region templates, which say they shouldn't have any listings. I've added a handful of listings to the Worcestershire page because these are not associated with any major settlement, so were not listed. These are things like country parks, large woodland reserves, and stately homes in the middle of the countryside.

The region template says this is not allowed, so an editor has added a tag asking for them to removed. However they have nowhere else to go, so I think this is possibly something in need of a policy tweak. JimKillock (talk) 09:22, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The listings should be added to the closest town article. Preferably one that exists but if a large town, that has hotels, is missing then create the page. In the region article there is no problem with listing attractions, but they should be a text pros and have a link to the city article where more detailed information is available. What the region article really needs is not listing that are not in city articles but information on main attractions in there area. --Traveler100 (talk) 11:31, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

These new requirements will apply to new accounts and privileged accounts. New accounts will be required to create a password with a minimum length of 8 characters. Privileged accounts will be prompted to update their password to one that is at least 10 characters in length.

These changes are planned to be in effect on December 13th. If you think your work or tools will be affected by this change, please let us know on the talk page.

A few practical notes: If you login with a too-short password, you'll get a warning, but you won't be forced to change your password (for now; expect that to change). There are also rules about using passwords that are too common. They've disallowed extremely common passwords, such as 1234 or password for a long time, but now they'll be using a longer common-password list, so now you won't be able to use slightly less common passwords, such as bubbles1 or macaroni. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:50, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

One of the uses of the article Geo is to display article's locations on a map, as for example on Destinations. This works best when every article has a different lat/long, preferably sufficiently different that you don't have to zoom all the way in for the orange crosses to disappear. This is probably a unique requirement for WV, and for other uses it does not matter if the capital city, county, region and country all have the same lat/long. I would prefer that the inconsistencies were simply ignored, with the possible exception of differences of more than 500km (50km for cities). AlasdairW (talk) 08:40, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

I tend to open both map options from the ErrorHighlighter gadget to check which one is correct. There are a good number of wikidata entries that are incorrect. For regions and countries there can be a different. Wikipedia tends to weight the population center of a region while wikivoyage has geometric center. Key is also to look at the zoom factor. What I tend to do is edit the numbers in the map window until the position and zoom looks good then edit the geo in wikivoyage and sometimes also edit the wikidata coordinates. Suggestion of a recommend method is a good idea, should document at Category:Articles Geo different to Wikidata. --Traveler100 (talk) 14:47, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the input! Is there a way to mark an article as "yes wd/wv coordinates are different but we are happy with this"? Syced (talk) 03:43, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

I drafted this not long ago and perhaps we could decide whether to move it into "Wikivoyage" space or not? By creating this policy page, we'd no longer have to link to Wikipedia for our "deny" "policy". There is still room for improvement, so if we're not keen on making it policy yet, we could move it into Wikivoyage space as a draft temporarily, until we get the version we want. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:43, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

The w:Wikipedia:Deny recognition on which this is based is not a policy or even a guideline, it is an essay - one person's opinion, which does not impose specific obligations on the community. That is as it should be. This should not be set in stone as binding policy. K7L (talk) 14:49, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Sure, but we're not Wikipedia. They're a much larger site, currently, with a lot more edits, making it harder for the admins to patrol it fairly. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:51, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

I support turning this into policy. There is nothing objectionable here, and we have a small group of administrators trying to handle vandalism. Good work, SelfieCity. Ground Zero (talk) 16:04, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Support. Whatever label you want to hang on it, policy or guideline or essay, it's the general principle that guides the vandalism abatement procedures at Wikipedia and there's no reason why it shouldn't be the same here. Wikivoyage may be "a different place" than Wikipedia, but we're not that different, and this is one of the many principles that are equally applicable to all wikis. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:54, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

I mostly support this. I think policies that we follow here on WV should always be written down here locally.

First of all, vandals should certainly not have any "fair chance" to vandalize here, especially in the light of recent attacks on stewards and users who I would imagine do a stupendous job keeping other wikis clean of inappropriate content, because of the amount of hate they receive from said vandals, BTW going on as I'm typing this. And if "denying visibility" becomes policy it could well be extended to cover some particularly hard cases of touting and probably also copyvios. Also, I don't think this could lead to "Wikivoyage at the mercy of the whims of certain admins" or something of that sort (this concern has been voiced in some other discussions recently). The hidden edits are still open for all the other admins to examine, right?

Nevertheless, I don't know how meaningful it's to hide normal/small volume/general vandalism which can just be reverted. Deleting revisions and user names has until recently only been used to remove personal information and openly offensive edits, so I think it would be a too big step to hide each and every malicious edit. In other words, there should be different levels of action depending on how serious and above all how persistent the problem in each case is.

Moreover I don't really see the harm in openly pointing out the character of a particular vandal's edits? I mean, even as the edits themselves, the creations of the long term abusers are deleted and hidden, there could very well exist descriptions of said edits both as a reminder to instantly recognize the pattern of that particular vandal if they go inactive for months or years, and as a sign to the vandal that there's nothing they can come up with that admins and users wouldn't see through. Note that long-term vandals almost never vandalize "in general" (general vandalizing usually amounts to adding plain obscenities to random articles and stops immediately once they're blocked for the first time). Instead long-term vandals are reminiscent of broken records and they have a certain (type of) "message" they desperately want to voice and/or a particular set of articles they target. ϒψιλον (talk) 20:51, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

My feeling is that the reason for the new practices is that this is a Wiki with a small number of admins, facing a much less limited number of instances of vandalism. Sometimes, no admin at all is active, and we may have stewards covering for us, but though we are much indebted to them, we can't count on them because they're also busy at many other Wikis. None of this stuff would matter much if we could have 10 or even 5, maybe even 3 admins active at all hours of the day and night, every day, but I don't see that as likely any time soon. And while it would be good to have more admins, there is also the risk that giving too many people tools without being careful about who we give them to could give rise to damaging cases of some user who never should have been made an admin committing acts of vandalism as such. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:40, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

I oppose making this (or anything like it) a "policy". I don't care what namespace it resides in, but the multiplication of rules is generally a bad idea. It's good to seek ideas from other people, but it's not usually good to prescribe a one-size-fits-all approach to every situation.

In the particular instance, you should not treat a vandal from a politician's office the same way you treat a vandal from a school. Politicians should be shamed for poor behavior; students should not. The Arabic Wikipedia, BTW, got a number of useful editors back in their early days by carrying on personal conversations with vandals, and trying to get them to make constructive edits. They were operating on the theory that if you could vandalize in Arabic, then that proved that you could write in Arabic and already knew how the Edit button worked, so you were a prime target. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:22, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I think we may be getting too hung up on the specific reference to this as a "policy". I'd be content to have it function here the same way it does at Wikipedia, that is, not as a hard-and-fast rule but as a general statement of best practice that governs vandalism abatement in most if not virtually all cases. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:02, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Further to my remarks above: We should probably be adding more patrollers to deal with vandalism. If these guidelines are going to lead to too much dissension, we don't need to have them, but that's only provided we really have enough hands on deck to deal with the vandalism in real time. And while patrollers can help, we also need people with admin tools. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:17, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm ready to declare this entire matter closed - this proposed policy as well as the so-called "controversy" over the revision deletion of vandalistic edits - for want of any seriously considered opposition to the current course of action. What, in essence, are the arguments against? Between this thread, pub#Changing visibility on edits.., and Wikivoyage:User ban nominations#Ban editing userspace pages?, we've got: one user whose commentary advocating for gently reaching out to vandals hearkens back to the farcical approach we took in the earliest days of this site and is frankly jaw-dropping in its naïveté; one marginally active admin who mostly seems offended that all decision-making doesn't grind to a halt during her months-long absences from active administrative duty; one admin using these deliberations as an excuse to reignite an old feud with me; one user whose history as a participant in policy discussions could be described as either gleeful obstructionism for its own sake or something that looks a hell of a lot like it; and a couple of trusted admins who are urging us to proceed with caution but stopping short of opposing the current procedure. With the obvious exception of the latter, do we really have to pretend to take these comments seriously? Wikivoyage is not a dictatorship and we should be willing to hear out alternative viewpoints, but it's also important to draw a distinction between legitimate concerns and nonsense. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:27, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

True enough, but I think you know what I'm getting at anyway. If we're going to keep this proposal in limbo, it better be for a good reason. The reasons we've heard thus far aren't good ones. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:40, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't support enshrining this in policy either, at least not yet. I'm tentatively optimistic about our experiment with revision-deleting long-term abusers, but it is still very new. It's also worth keeping in mind that the proposal under discussion is significantly more heavy-handed than w:WP:DENY. I'd feel more comfortable if we imported a version of that essay instead.

In any case there's no rush. Why don't we keep this in SelfieCity's userspace for now, and in a few months when we have more perspective we can revisit whether to turn it into policy? —Granger (talk·contribs) 05:52, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

There's no reason to rush, but there's also no reason not to rush. You say "the proposal under discussion is significantly more heavy-handed than w:WP:DENY", but why is that a bad thing? What specifically about the proposal strikes you as being anything other than common sense, and applicable to the vast majority of cases of vandalism? (And as for unusual cases where any of these proposed procedures would not be suitable, what makes you think we wouldn't willing to set policy aside where exceptions prove rules, just as with our other policies?) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:28, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I have some reservations about this policy, but am not opposed to giving it a go. It would be useful to have some measures of whether or not it is successful - e.g. do we say it works if less users are blocked in 2019 than 2018, or conversely do we note a failure if there are less new users making good edits, because their first test edit was met with hard force. AlasdairW (talk) 21:25, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I think we should put some form of distinction in place between essays or opinions, guidelines and inflexible, binding policies. The latter, once in place, are restrictive and have been difficult to get rid of; they lead to instruction creep which is best avoided. Trying indiscriminate, widespread revision deletions as an experiment is one thing - casting them in stone as policy is quite another. K7L (talk) 22:08, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

K7L - Importantly, there's nothing about revision deletions in this proposal (unless I missed something, and if I did, I would not be against the idea of striking that portion). The actual text of User:SelfieCity/Deny reads like a combination of w:WP:DENY, w:WP:BEANS, and w:WP:Revert, block, ignore, which, again, are regarded as canonical anti-vandalism procedure at Wikipedia appropriate in the vast majority of real-world cases. The revision deletion experiment is a separate issue, and while there's a good deal of overlap between the two things, we should not be confused about what exactly it is we're supporting or opposing when it comes to this proposal. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:40, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

@AndreCarrotflower: I think you should read the proposal more carefully. It does encourage revision deletion, as well as containing other advice that isn't in the Wikipedia essays you linked. —Granger (talk·contribs) 23:44, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I stand corrected. To be as clear as I possibly can without stuffing beans up my nose (pinging SelfieCity for this part), the most we can say about revision deletion at this point is that it's something that may be effective against a specific kind of long-term abuser, and at the very least we should wait to see how effective the experiment is before advocating it officially. But after rereading the document again, I have to say that other than that clause, there's nothing in there that's not common sense and/or already standard operating procedure at Wikipedia. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:54, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

That may be. The revision deletion paragraph is my biggest concern about the proposal. Another area of concern (which doesn't come from the Wikipedia essays as far as I can tell) is the encouragement of admin-only discussions. My other slight concerns are the bullet points that begin "It's important that you don't go the pub" and "It's important to remember", which seem to be phrased in a stronger way than the advice on Wikipedia. —Granger (talk·contribs) 00:41, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘With the caveat that I'm not an administrator at Wikipedia and can't speak on the precise inner workings with a great deal of authority, it seems like the best analogue for the clause about admin-only discussions would be w:WP:LTA. If you take a real close look at that page and (especially) a lot of the individual case dossiers linked from it, you'll see a lot of terse conversations among admins where the only logical way they make sense is if most of the salient information is being shared in a parallel conversation held somewhere else, away from prying eyes. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:57, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Generally, I haven't played a major role in this discussion, but I think it's important to mention that I've made some edits to the policy page: compare. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 01:00, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm probably ruffling a few feathers by jumping into this discussion, and I don't feel as though I'm welcome to comment on the whole issue, but the admin-only discussions are a point I'm confused about. I was under the impression, from the talks at Wikivoyage:Vandalism in progress, that the non-public board was supposed to be for discussion of vandal identification, so as not to allow them an opportunity to change the methods that make them pass the duck test. Fine; this is necessary. It was further deemed that the proper permission level to access this board was sysop; perfectly reasonable. Recently, when I reported a vandal, I find that, not only is such discussion apparently not going on, but also found out that seeming "policy"/admin practices with regards to vandals were apparently being decided there, instead. I can't see a reason for such discussion not to happen out in the open. Even if the talks must happen on a page only admins can edit, fine, but what is the harm in allowing even the vandals to read "by the way, there is now consensus(?) to hide vandal revisions"? Instead, we have damaged the apparent openness of the community and called the legitimate processes of consensus-building into question. I understand these decisions were not taken lightly, but even so it certainly feels exclusionary and goes against the spirit of wikis. ARR8 (talk) 01:19, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

@ARR8: You're certainly welcome to participate in the discussion, and I'm glad you have. I share many of your concerns about admin-only discussions.

@AndreCarrotflower: It's possible you're right about w:WP:LTA. At the very least I think any policy that encourages admin-only discussions should emphasize that they should only happen when absolutely necessary. —Granger (talk·contribs) 01:29, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Granger has made some more changes, and mostly I agree with them. However, I don't agree with the sentence "But only use the abuse filters for discussion when absolutely necessary, as this excludes other members of the community from participating." The stuff that's discussed in the Abuse Filters is generally not important enough to worry about it excluding anyone, and honestly, almost all of the regular users are one of three things: 1) already an admin — that's most of them, 2) not an admin because they don't want to be, or 3) they're making rapid progress towards adminship. Therefore, most people can access the filter, or they don't want to be an admin (their own choice, not admins' fault), or fairly soon they'll be admin and be able to see the Abuse Filters anyway. And, if something really important is mentioned there, we can always copy it into an email. So far, conversation in the Abuse Filter has been pretty casual, and that has been fine, and we've come up with quite a lot of good ideas without causing harm to those who can't access the filter. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:26, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Given the number of objections which are going to make it difficult to reach a consensus in favour, but which are unfortunately short on specific criticisms of the proposal's text or suggestions on how to improve it, how about we treat the proposal as policy for a time-limited period (say, one month, or six weeks), and see what effects - positive and negative - it has on the vandal situation? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 22:53, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Since a couple of people have asked, here are some specific examples of concerns I have about the proposal. I'm concerned about the encouragement of admin-only discussions, the encouragement of revision-deletion, and the repeated advice to do nothing and avoid discussions, all of which strike me as contrary to the spirit of a wiki and which are liable to lead to a feeling of exclusiveness and discontentment. It's possible that as phrased in the page these are all good advice and the good will outweigh the harm, but I'm not confident in that, and I would much rather wait until the current fervor has died down and we can consider the proposal in a more coolheaded way.

I'm also concerned that revision deletion may be a slippery slope. There already seem to be admins (I haven't checked the logs to find out who) revision-deleting edits made not by vandals but simply by banned users and by established editors responding to banned users, and I'm concerned where this is going to go. I don't want to end up in a situation where people feel that any harmful edit can be revision-deleted at their discretion. I'd say a policy that encourages revision deletion should place clear limits on when revision deletion is appropriate. —Granger (talk·contribs) 23:37, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I would say those edits don't fully address my concerns. I'll see if I can come up with a version that does. I have to go to work in a minute, but I'll come back to this when I have time. —Granger (talk·contribs) 01:29, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

I support a trial period but do not support an entrenched policy yet. There are many reasons for why vandalism exists and recognition is only one of them. I would wait and see whether vandalism rates drop due to this approach or not. Especially because a significant number of editors have reservations with such a high usage of revision deletions. Gizza (roam) 02:48, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

I find the wording OK and having a trial period a good idea. Would however like to suggest that changing visibility, be limited to offensive content or personal attach. Would also consider political views being hidden too. However just a random vandalism, or meaningless change should just be a normal undo/rollback. As mentioned by others concerned about keeping the spirit of open editing on a wiki site. Yes they can still be seen by administrators but this could give the false impression of a closed group and favors admins who are the most active. There are admins on this site that have other commitments in the physical world and also in other other virtual domains or like myself are sometimes outside of land and cell connection for periods of time. Also moving discussions and edits to admins only will make it difficult for other contributors to follow what is happening, which could discourage future potential admin candidates being educated and coming forward. End of the day best solution is just to undo without making too much noise and ignore the vandals as much as possible. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:08, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't want there to be a misimpression among non-admin users that they could face some kind of secret process (and for whatever it's worth, I assure everyone that this is only about vandalism, nothing else), but discussing methods of vandals in public means that they can read the specifics of any filters and adjust accordingly. Surely, you're well aware of that. And maybe none of this would be too important right now if we had a bunch of active admins covering this site at all hours of the day, every day, to revert vandalism and block vandals, but you also have to realize that there could come a time when no matter how many crew members we have on deck, manually holding back the junk might become impossible. I fear that even suggesting this in public is a stupid thing to do, but since you insist on discussing security matters in public... Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:34, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ First, I agree with Ikan Kekek. Second, T100, your opinions seem on the whole are reasonable; however, I'm a little surprised about "political views" being hidden. Are there certain ones you are referring to here? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:36, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

There's been a lot of concern about the revision deletions, and there's also been enough open and detailed discussion about this issue that most of our strategy has probably been compromised already, so I suppose there's no point in continuing to be reticent. One of the concerns has been that there doesn't seem to be a well-defined scope of when revision deletion should and should not happen. This is not true. We have several different long-term abusers working simultaneously: Fuerdai, BTCentralPlus, LibMod, ArticCynda, and a crosswiki vandal who verbally abuses and threatens various Stewards by name. Revision deletions are supposed to be targeted at only the first three of those five. The philosophy is that the ability to see their own usernames and reread the content of their own vandalism in page histories is itself a form of "recognition" that vandals should be "denied" (cf.w:Wikipedia:Deny recognition). Therefore, the username, content, and edit summary of the vandals' edits should be deleted, as should the edit summary of the subsequent edit, which usually also includes the vandal's username (e.g. "Reverted edits by Vandal X to previous version by Good-Faith Contributor Y"). Inasmuch as some users may have employed revision deletion in other cases than this, that's a problem and it should stop, but overall I think the tactic is a good one, as did most of those who shared their feedback on Abuse Filter 25, where the idea was first hatched. It's too early to tell how successful we've been, but I think it's worthwhile to at least continue trying until we know (and anyone who's paying attention knows in which direction Fuerdai and BTCentralPlus activity seems to be trending).

Another concern that's been expressed is that the revision deletions contravene the spirit of an open wiki. But what's happening here is not without precedent. The aggregate of everything we've been doing lately to abate vandalism here - I'm talking about the revision deletions, SelfieCity's proposed policy, the use of Abuse Filters to share information away from the prying eyes of vandals - constitutes a sort of patchwork, ad hoc analogue to w:Wikipedia:Long-term abuse, which is a centralized area where Wikipedia administrators identify, form strategy regarding, and finally act against persistent vandals. Importantly, most of the conversations regarding that seem to take place in backchannels inaccessible to ordinary users; I'm not an admin over there, and I have a hard time following the publicly accessible portions of the conversations there for want of so much "missing" information. Many of the elements of our homegrown version of WP:LTA are improvised and imperfect solutions - I'm talking about the use of Abuse Filters here, which have only two settings, "publicly visible" and "admin only", which gives us no way to simultaneously exclude vandals while also including trusted and active users who aren't admins, such as Ypsilon and ARR8 - and I would most certainly welcome a superior alternative to that element of the setup. But until then, I would ask you to think about this from the point of view of those who are doing the most heavy lifting in terms of combating vandalism. It's an exhausting, thankless, neverending, but ultimately vitally necessary task that puts you in contact with some really breathtaking examples of the ugliness that people can inflict on one another. We're all human beings behind these screens and keyboards, and that sort of thing wears us down. Why would we not want to do all we can to discourage those who want to behave badly, and to streamline the process for those who work to undo their damage? And, more to the point, what good does it do to doubt the intentions of the people who are doing the hard work of vandalism abatement? Why do we elect people to positions of trust, such as administrator and bureaucrat, only to then begin to question their trustworthiness? How does that help the site or, frankly, make any sense at all?

Yes, and may I say that early on I made some mistakes and reverted some instances of vandalism that weren't one of the first three, because I wasn't understanding the method yet. But what harm does that do?

I know this is a little blunt, but if people feel excluded because anti-vandalism discussions are done in private, IMO, shame on them. We're not trying to ban non-admins in secret, or anything of that nature. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:38, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

I'll point out, since I've been mentioned by name, that I did not express the thoughts I did out of a grudge from being personally excluded, or anything like that. I have no such grudge, resentment, etc. Even if I were included, I would still say the things I did. Speaking on the merits of the issue itself, I'm not convinced that outlining the broad details of this strategy makes is worthless, and I certainly hope that's not the case. But returning to the broader meta-issue of "exclusion" (a word I also used), it's more about the principle. Say someone wanted to weigh in in the revision issue or whatever is being discussed behind closed doors. They would:

Not know the discussed problems that led to the introduction of such measures

Not know the different variants suggested

Not know the objections raised, or the arguments against those objections

Not know whether the issue were permanent or on a trial basis

Not know if a process is being used "inappropriately" (that is, outside of the guidelines suggested in the hidden discussion, not just in a way that used doesn't like)

In effect, this blocks a user from commenting, and we lose on the perspectives they may have to offer. These can come from anyone: a Wikipedia admin, a steward, even an anonymous user passing by. It is for this reason that I worry that having such an avenue, and using it for anything but discussing vandal patterns (per Granger's edits to /Deny) would eventually lead to a slow creep of anything vandal-related being discussed there, out of even the tiniest perception that open discussion would benefit the vandals -- and such a phenomenon would only hurt this community, in my opinion. I support this effort as much as anyone, but, seeing the scope of it change so wildly and so soon gives me pause. Hopefully my perspective can be understood here. ARR8 (talk) 15:55, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm really sorry if my message implied "shame on you", because you're a really valuable contributor. Thanks for clarifying and I think here you have a lot of good ideas about this. Email is probably a better route than abuse filters, although I see no harm in casual discussion about vandals taking place in the abuse filters. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:01, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

That's fine. Hopefully we can all do our part to remember the people behind the keyboards, as ACF points out. ARR8 (talk) 17:20, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I didn't intend to refer to you originally, more to a "hypothetical person" who felt excluded by this whole thing. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:29, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Can I add to Andre's above comment, the substance of which I agree with and support wholeheartedly, that however you feel about revision deletion, the fundamental principle of deny recognition is ignoring the attempts of vandals (specifically those named above) to communicate. That is still not happening, which is frustrating to see. Please can all regular users refrain from replying to any such comments left by repeat vandals? This requires no effort at all apart from some self-control. Thanks, ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:49, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

We shouldn't worry too much about what vandals think or feel — remember they're not here to write a travel guide, but in the best case only here to add a couple smileys and in the worst case to troll the project for years. Instead, the primary objective should be ridding Wikivoyage of the vandals' edits and prevent them from editing here, as effectively as possible, even if that would as a side effect include them getting recognition in some way.

I don't know if not discussing vandals and vandalism publicly at all is the right way to go, or if it would be better to for instance do the exact opposite and set up some type of rogues gallery. The latter does not rule out routinely deleting and hiding every bit of data the vandals themselves add to Wikivoyage, nor does it rule out not communicating with the vandal at all. But, let's go ahead with SC's suggestion, say, for a month (holidays may mean an uptick in vandalism when certain folks have more time on their hands), and see if it's efficient.

Plus, part of why serial vandals are so annoying is that they usually display the same kind of behavior over and over and over again. Sometimes a look at Recent changes is enough to notice who's back. Some "smarter" vandals make other type of edits to other types of articles under a new user name, but you can be sure they're back to their normal MO within a week. Which is why I don't know how much discussion is needed, especially for well-known vandals who's behavior can be fully described in a few sentences. Though if we ever again get that kind of trolling problem we had 4-5 years ago, then discussions that not everyone can see would definitely be useful.

Personally, like ARR8, I don't have a problem if only admins discuss the matter. Vandalism and problematic users is after all not something I particularly enjoy discussing or having to do with (well, would anyone here miss vandals if they would just magically go away?? ;)) and I even sometimes ignore. ϒψιλον (talk) 20:41, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

@AndreCarrotflower: it sounds like I'm basically on the same page with you. This edit to the proposal was mainly to ensure that revision deletion and admin-only discussions stay limited to these very narrow situations. I feel that admin-only discussions have a tendency to cause non-admins to feel excluded and dissatisfied, so they should only be used when absolutely necessary, but I recognize that for discussing the tactics of individual abusers they may be necessary.

@SelfieCity: I strongly disagree with your "shame on them" comment. If users feel excluded by admin-only discussions, I think they are absolutely justified in feeling excluded. Unfortunately this may be a necessary evil. It's not enough to say "most of the current good users are on their way to becoming admins anyway" – if we want the site to grow, we have to hope that we will continue to attract new users and encourage them to stick around. —Granger (talk·contribs) 00:11, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Does that also apply to ones like "I hope he gets run over by a truck", etc? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 03:46, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think we need to worry too much about the fine distinctions between "I hope..." and "I'm going to...". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:38, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
I'm not seeing the value in giving this advice, temporarily or otherwise, any particular official status at all.

Here's what I'm seeing: If you think this is good advice, then you should do this. You should do this right now, without waiting for 'permission' to quietly revert vandalism. You do not need someone to say 'Quietly reverting vandalism is policy' or 'We're going to have a trial period in which we pretend that quietly reverting vandalism is a policy' for you to just go quietly revert vandalism whenever you encounter it.

And if (probably in a minority of cases) you happen think this advice isn't the best approach for a particular situation, then you should do whatever (in your best judgment) you think is more appropriate to the situation. For example: In some cases, the appropriate response to vandalism isn't "revert, block, ignore"; sometimes the appropriate response to vandalism is to "noisily" protect the page from further edits. That possibility is not even mentioned in Selfie's page.

If we're going to be adopting advice from the English Wikipedia, then I'd recommend spending a lot of time looking at w:en:Wikipedia:Instruction creep and w:en:Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard. This community has a strong tendency (even stronger than the English Wikipedia, which is bad enough, in all conscience) to turn "good advice" into "mandatory rules", and if you want to be successful in the long run, we have got to avoid creating unnecessary rules. So, please: Don't adopt a policy that says that (sometimes) it's a good idea to quietly revert vandalism. If you need a "help page" that tells people how to do that (perhaps in case someone wants to know when that approach might be more successful than other strategies?), then let's have a help page about the subject. But let's not have another rule that defines the Only True Way™ to deal with vandals. We won't be happy about it when that well-intended rule turns into a crusty, calcified requirement, and then we start having fights here because someone decided that "noisy" page protection was more appropriate than "quiet" rev-deleting.

And for those who want to see this promoted to some official status: What do you actually need from that status? Is there anything about quietly reverting vandalism that you feel like you can't do today, just because that advice is in Selfie's userspace instead of in the project space, with the "policy" category on it? Is the existing policy truly not sufficient authorization for what you want to do? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:35, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

User talk:Libertarianmoderate2 is a good example of where, without policy, such things can lead. With a policy, we would have known how to act in that situation. However, I will add something to the policy draft that mentions that the "policy"/"essay"/(whatever people want to call it) is flexible, and that if you have experience in combating vandalism and know a more appropriate alternative which is acceptable with the rest of the community, you may do it. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 03:51, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

SC, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but: please, be careful of conflating a personal learning experience for you with a learning experience for the whole community. The incident at that talk page was by no means a disaster. There was no harm done, and hopefully you have a better idea of handling that kind of thing now. Overall, it may be a positive event in that light.

I have to say WhatamIdoing's sentiment above appeals to me. A line has to be drawn between benefitting from longtime editors' experience and advice and setting such things in stone. If the advice is good, it will be used, even if, or especially if, it is written in the form of an informational essay.

Although one's first instinct is to write one's learned experiences down, for the next generation, one has to recognize that people don't truly learn unless they are allowed to make their own mistakes, and that's fine. At the end of the day, you can't teach some things by writing them in a book. Common sense is one of those. And if the benefit from having this as policy is such, then the loss of flexibility that comes with it becomes more important.

Some of this doesn't apply to this discussion specifically, but these are my thoughts. ARR8 (talk) 04:42, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

No one is saying that this has to be hard-and-fast policy, as opposed to an essay, as indeed w:WP:DENY is. That has been repeated several times now, and I would ask people to please stop basing their arguments on that premise. It's a bad-faith way to debate. Let me rephrase the question: what are the arguments against accepting User:SelfieCity/Deny as an essay? How would it be a bad thing to have a readymade rationale that we can refer to that's applicable in the vast majority of cases, yet that can be safely ignored in those few cases where it's appropriate to do so? More to the point: WhatamIdoing, if you're so against this idea being implemented at Wikivoyage, and you're more active at Wikipedia than here, then why are you not busily lobbying the Wikipedia brass for deletion of w:WP:DENY? Do you consider Wikipedia more worthy of effective anti-vandalism measures than Wikivoyage? If not, then why the double standard? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:58, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I am confused about what exactly /Deny is meant to be. Wikivoyage doesn't really have Wikivoyage: namespace non-policy pages. Even the ones that aren't policy are guidelines, and even the ones that are policy are mostly not 100% inviolable, and are more like guidelines. If moved out of userspace, would /Deny not have the same role as those? Or are we introducing Wikipedia-esque opinion essays here? If so, why even move it out of userspace, as said? (legitimate question; what's the reason?) ARR8 (talk) 05:04, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Since /Deny is still in userspace, what it ultimately ends up being is negotiable. Why remove it from userspace? Greater visibility, mostly. w:WP:DENY may not be hard-and-fast policy, but it's a well-known and well-heeded piece of advice, which it almost certainly would not be if it were tucked in an obscure corner of some random user's userspace, and when cited as a rationale for anti-vandalism activity, it carries almost as much weight as it would if it were policy. Yet because it's only an essay, Wikipedia admins who come across those rare situations where the principles it advocates aren't appropriate can take a different tack without running afoul of policy. Upthread, SelfieCity cites the need for "flexibility" in applying the procedures, and this seems pretty close to an ideal way to give the page the visibility it needs without tying admins' hands too much. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:13, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

About page-protection: I'm sure no-one means to put an end to that with any other guidelines or suggestions. It's sometimes necessary. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:23, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

I've seen those pages, but they slipped my mind; I stand corrected. Although, I think the Wikipedia analog of Expeditions is Wikiprojects, and I think the point still stands that, although the vast majority of Wikipedia: namespace pages are (I think) informal opinion essays which are, shall we say, encouraged reading for the community, we currently have no such pages here. ARR8 (talk) 05:31, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

ARR8, I believe that there are more "Articles for deletion" pages in the Wikipedia: namespace at the English Wikipedia than anything else – about 400,000 AFDs out of about one million pages. There are a few thousand "essays" (including some essays in the userspace). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:09, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Now to answer Andre's questions:

"What are the arguments against accepting User:SelfieCity/Deny as an essay? How would it be a bad thing to have a readymade rationale that we can refer to that's applicable in the vast majority of cases, yet that can be safely ignored in those few cases where it's appropriate to do so?"

Answer: None – if, and only if, we accept it as an essay that contains advice that may (or may not) be applicable to any given situation, rather than as a set of rules or a policy, as was proposed. For example, you described the page as a "proposed policy" in your comment at 15:29, 9 December 2018.

"WhatamIdoing, if you're so against this idea being implemented at Wikivoyage, and you're more active at Wikipedia than here, then why are you not busily lobbying the Wikipedia brass for deletion of w:WP:DENY?"

Answer: I'm not against the approach being used here (or anywhere). I'm against the approach being treated as a set of mandatory rules, or anything even sort-of-kind-of like a set of mandatory rules. It is good advice for many situations. It is a bad policy.

As for the presumably rhetorical question of why I don't take WP:DENY to AFD at the English Wikipedia, the answers are: I think it's good advice for many situations (and so worthy of existing as an essay), it is not over-used at the English Wikipedia (so not causing significant problems), my usual approach to advice pages that have problems is to fix them rather than to delete them (a personal preference), and there are no policy-compliant reasons for its deletion, according to their rules (so a trip to AFD would be a pointless and w:en:WP:POINTy waste of time).

"Do you consider Wikipedia more worthy of effective anti-vandalism measures than Wikivoyage? If not, then why the double standard?"

Answer: This begs the question of whether this is an effective strategy. AFAICT nobody's ever done any research to see whether this discourages vandals, especially for long-term abusers. I believe that this approach generally reduces stress for editors (because writing up complaints is draining, and so is reading them).

I don't see a double standard in my view: I'm happy for any wiki to have and use that advice, as optional advice. I would be sorry to see any community adopt that advice as "rules" or "policy". If you take that page and write at the top of it something like "This is some advice, written by someone who's been editing for less than a year, that most of us like and most of us follow most of the time, and you can take it or leave it as you choose", then I'm okay with it. If you instead write that idea up as "Here's what everyone ought to do with vandalism", then I'm not okay with it. Again, this is good advice for many situations, but it is a bad policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:39, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

But it's not just the advice of one person. Others have edited the draft. And the point is that these tactics are to be used for vandals for whom other tactics have been insufficient. No-one is suggesting that all these things should apply to every situation, are they? Or, to be precise, that's an argument only critics like you are using, and therefore seems like a straw man, but maybe I missed something. If there's any problematic language in that draft, please bring it to my (and everyone else's) attention. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:21, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

RBI is usually where enwiki starts, not something that's tried when people are frustrated. It might be effective at preventing a bored kid from turning into a dedicated LTA. It is probably not effective at dealing with an experienced editor who is is holding a grudge, mentally ill, etc. If your goal is dealing with existing long-term abusers, then I think you need to go talk to the stewards to get some relevant advice.

As for this page, specifying the number of contributors is not important. Making a distinction between some good advice and actual requirements is important.

I've spent a lot of time writing policies and guidelines at enwiki (e.g., about a third of the language in their guideline on External links is mine, the entire WP:PROPOSAL process for new guidelines and policies, some of the two main medical guidelines, etc.). The problem I want to prevent here is the natural process by which "I have a good idea" slides into "this is a rule, and you are bad for not following it". This is a really, really, really difficult problem in online communities. There is a strong desire for conformity, and there are always self-appointed rule-enforcers and closeted bureaucrats ready to shut down different approaches or emphasize the importance of rule-following. It's a problem of human nature: people want to feel like they belong, and one way to show that I belong – regardless of what kind of community it is – is by learning a "rule" and then telling everyone else that they have to follow the rule that I just learned. And, unfortunately, there's no requirement for the rule I learned to actually be a rule, or for me to have learned it correctly. Innocent belief is all that the human brain requires before it will latch onto a way to demonstrate that I'm part of the group.

There are some ways to discourage rule inflation for a given advice page. One of those ways is Wikivoyage's traditional approach, namely keeping such advice in userspace. This might work best if you prohibit cross-namespace redirects and shortcuts.

Another (slightly less effective, in my experience) is to clearly label such pages as optional. A formalized system might work best there, as editors in rule-bound communities are generally more reticent about changing "essay" into "policy" than they are about removing words like "optional" or "sometimes, but not other times" from the page's content.

Another (even less effective) is to draft the page contents to defend against that tendency (see, e.g., the multiple failures of that approach on enwiki's WP:BRD page, which began life as 'Here's something for an experienced, mature adult to try if you want to change a page that seems "stuck" in disputes' and is now altogether too frequently interpreted as 'I get to revert anything once, for any reason or no reason. You aren't allowed to revert my reversion, and you have to start any discussion about it, or I'm going to accuse you of violating this rule!').

Again: The advice is not bad (although it may be misapplied, if the target is LTAs). But it's not a good policy, and unless you want bad policies, we need to do what we can to make sure everyone knows that it belongs in the "good optional advice" mental category and out of the "(nearly) mandatory rules" mental category. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:38, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi. Have little to add here, but would like to admit I was wrong about the Wikipedia: namespace. ARR8 (talk) 13:59, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

[outdent]
For me the reason to have this to be something other than a userspace essay is that I think revision deletion and policy discussions in closed rooms are serious things, which should not be done without some support in policy. I do not want a policy encouraging use of those measures where less would suffice, much less a policy prescribing such measures. Instead the policy should say that these measures can be taken in some situations, where an admin thinks they are needed, but warns and forbids using them as a routine (except in clearly limited situations) or against graffiti and good faith edits. For an experiment thoroughly discussed in the pub, a user essay is probably enough, but I would not like an admin using similar measures in a new situation with the only rationale being admin discretion (or a closed room discussion) – except perhaps as a first step, to be discussed as soon as possible.

The problem with these measures, as pointed out above but seemingly missed by some, is that the general community cannot see whether the situation where they are used warrants their use. This differs from page protection and user blocks, where most information is public and everyone can see they are unusual measures. I trust our admins, and I suppose the rest of the community does, but openness is needed to maintain that trust if things get rough.

To ARR8: I understand what you were saying in your reply well, but to clarify, I did not mean that the incident was a terrible thing, but I'm saying that with this policy/essay, it never would have happened, and we could have been much better at denying recognition. I think in some ways it was a good learning experience, but it's better to use a policy page for information than having a discussion that doesn't end too well. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:13, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Regarding Ikan and WhatamIdoing's exchange above, I think pursuing a middle ground between essay and policy is the most prudent course of action. Maybe call it a "guideline". (I don't know if there's an equivalent category on Wikipedia, and I don't suppose it matters. We're a different community.) As I said above, we need enough flexibility built into this to allow admins to use their own judgment without being officially sanctioned by policy, but the disclaimer at the top of Wikipedia essays - "contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors", "has not been thoroughly vetted by the community" - is some pretty weak tea. Much more than merely one user's opinion, User:SelfieCity/Deny is widely acknowledged best practice in the vast majority of cases, and the "thorough vetting" of the content of the page is happening right now in this very conversation. If we were to put it into mainspace with an infobox on top, it should make both of the points in the preceding sentence very clear, and it should also state that although admins are free to disregard the prescribed course of action if circumstances warrant, that should happen very seldom in practice, and they may be asked to explain their rationale for doing so if it's not obvious. Just as I would expect, or hope, that any Wikipedia admin who went about blithely ignoring w:WP:DENY would soon get a friendly message on his user talk page saying "hey, what's your thought process here?" -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:41, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

DENY is ignored every day at the English Wikipedia. See, e.g., the existence of multiple noticeboards dedicated to discussing vandals, the existence of categories to track certain sockpuppets (exactly against DENY's advice), the widespread use of Twinkle to give vandals attention by issuing warnings. I really don't know where you got the idea that DENY was such an important page at the English Wikipedia. In terms of its impact, its importance was calculated as mid-importance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:01, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Be that as it may, whatever level of importance Wikipedia does or does not place on DENY is irrelevant to what we do at Wikivoyage. Wikipedia should consider itself lucky that it has as many admins and as much of an editor base as it does. Out here in the boondocks of the WMF, on a small to midsize wiki with only so many eyes on the Recent Changes log at any given time, we don't have the luxury of taking a primarily reactive approach to vandalism. We have to put more effort on stopping it before it begins, because once it does begin, it's that much more of a burden on the time and energy of what few admins we do have. My opinion remains as described above. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:10, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Setting aside what works and doesn't work in Wikipedia, this article would be a useful guideline to help admins know what options they have and at their discretion in dealing with aggressive vandals. As a guideline (let's make it the first in Wikivoyage), it would not be required that admins follow it, but they would be permitted to follow it if they felt it was appropriate. An admin who oversteps community expectations is using this guideline where it may not be appropriate would be expected to explain/ justify the action as with any other admin actions. Ground Zero (talk) 17:37, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Actually no, this wouldn't be the "first" to need an explicit this is a guideline in the intro as that already happened with Wikivoyage:Words to avoid. Wording like "The Anytown Motel and Diner is one of the seven wonders of the modern world" would be randomly added to WTA as an example of touting, but in some other context like "The pyramids of Giza are one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" the hype may be legit. Often, proposed new entries would be added to WTA, just to be reverted as instruction creep. Users were also editing multiple pages just to remove phrasing like "it should be noted that..." as the WTA guideline said "that's why we wrote it in the guides, then". On text which has been copy-pasted from local destination marketing organisation material, one can almost use WTA as a buzzword bingo card and check off every square, but it remains only a guideline. Wikivoyage:Don't tout is the actual policy.

Furthermore, w:WP:DENY isn't even a guideline. It's an essay, it's one person's opinion and nothing more. Use it if its useful, but don't create a policy or guideline obligating anyone to handle the next problematic edits the exact same way. K7L (talk) 18:33, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

It's more than one person's essay, and in fact, I really should read it again, with a fine-toothed comb, and see if I think any of it should be changed. Good points about Words to avoid, though. A couple of other thoughts: AndreCarrotflower, when you say this "deny" policy is "applicable in the vast majority of cases", could you clarify what you mean? Because I think you and I and everyone else would probably agree that it is inapplicable to the new vandal who posts "fuck gerbils" or some other inane thing, repeating letters, or just deletes a bunch of an article. We would agree that the appropriate policy would be to roll back those edits and do nothing else unless the vandalism is particularly serious, in which case a block of 1 day or a week or whatever without comment would be the best policy, right? Also, WhatamIdoing, you refer to "RBI". RBI to me is a baseball term, run batted in. What is it to you? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:43, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@K7L:, a guideline doesn't obligateanyone to do anything. Yet again, your contribution to the discussion is completely beside the point, and only serves to sidetrack the discussion. I'm not the only person who wonders if you do this intentionally. Ground Zero (talk) 21:13, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Ikan - The proposal is titled "deny recognition", correct? Broadly speaking, that's good advice for the vast majority of the cases of vandalism that we see (as is w:Wikipedia:Don't stuff beans up your nose and w:Wikipedia:Revert, block, ignore, from which it also draws inspiration), and the solution you cite above for silly nonsense vandalism ("roll back those edits and do nothing else") is actually a perfect example of denying recognition - as opposed to, say, writing a snarky edit summary when reverting, or leaving a warning message on the vandal's talk page. In terms of the specific practices the proposal advocates, I think it's pretty obvious from context that many of those are intended against more persistent vandals. If anything, I think maybe including a little more background information about why we deny recognition, why we don't stuff beans up our nose, and why we revert, block, and ignore (this could be adapted from what's already in the Wikipedia analogues) might help guide less experienced admins who may not be sure what to do in a given scenario, but overall I think anyone who applies common sense to what's written there will have no trouble getting the general idea. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:35, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

By the way, I read through the entire document (call it what you want), made a few changes and suggested another which was agreed to. I think it's fine. It says it's a flexible guideline, and that's what it is - a flexible guideline. I'm fine with it and would like to see any arguments about it based on content, not semantics about whether it's a rigid policy or not, because it states quite clearly that it is not. The basic principles are obvious; the implementation is open to trial and error and is flexible. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:33, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I think someone asked for a history section on the page, so I have added one. Perhaps there's people who know when we treated bad-faith users differently and they could add to the story. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 03:29, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

All you need, probably, is here. Note in particular this old language:

User bans are an extreme last resort for us. They are embarassing, because they are an admission that our community is not strong, patient, and professional enough to deal with unwanted edits using the simple freedom built into the WikiWiki way.

They may have been "embarrassing" for a tiny independent Wiki that had so few editors that it attracted little in the way of vandalism. Though I can tell you, it was very hard to get rid of that language when it proved destructive to the site, with several long-time admins leaving in frustration and very ugly acrimony and even at least a touch of paranoia infecting the site because of a hostile work environment. I'm so glad we weathered that and came out the other side.

Are we now in agreement to make this a "guideline" page? Is there consensus currently? Perhaps we just vote "support" or "agree" or "oppose" or "disagree", without discussion, so we can clearly see who is for and against. If you want to discuss more, there are threads above which provide plenty of opportunity to say opinions. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:58, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

This sometimes happens in listings because the system automatically adds a period after the address, and if someone adds "St." at the end of the address, it automatically adds another period to get "St.." I saw this on the Waukegan article; notice this revision and this one.

Is there anything that could be done about this? Any possible solutions? It's not important, just that if anyone has input, feel free to add it. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:13, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes. I will add it to my changed listing editor. This was already done with price. ARR8 (talk) 21:57, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Take Hsinchu as an example. The menu of the dynamic map has a code that displays the error. What is the reason? Can it be solved?--Yuriy kosygin (talk) 17:50, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting! Interestingly, it only happens to me when the map is in full-screen mode, not when embedded in the page. And it does not happen at all for article Fuji Five Lakes for instance. Syced (talk) 03:49, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

There's an error on the dynamic map for Shenyang too, though the nature of the error is different. Can anybody fix it? STW932 (talk) 13:15, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

andree - I noted this in an edit sumary when I tried in November to see if I could correct Shenyang error: Some of the pieces for the mapshapes are identical and rest have nothing... claims is not nil but parts of it are... I had similar issue which I resolved using "pcall" to catch an error (similar to catch in c) -- will add snippet to discussion page for Mapshapes -- Matroc (talk) 07:16, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I've been trawling through the Ohio Expedition to fill out outline articles, and noticed that the PetScan links no longer work, yielding a 502 Bad Gateway. However [[2]] petscan itself still appears to work. Am I doing it wrong?

Works for me, so it doesn't seem to be down. When I do many searches after each other in Petscan, I may get that same 502 error. This was a fairly common problem until a few months ago (after 3-4 searches it almost certainly yielded the 502 Bad Gateway), nowadays I've rarely encountered the error. I resolve it by opening Petscan in a new tab or new window. ϒψιλον (talk) 18:51, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes something changed yesterday. The automatic execute does not appear to work any more. If you go to the end of the link and remove &doit=1 it will work. Have to press the Do it manually. If it does not fix soon I will change the syntax of the call to manual run. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:09, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you all for your help! That did the trick. Mbrickn (talk) 19:14, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Oh, I see, the links from the table. Those don't work for me either, while Petscan still otherwise seems to be working normally. ϒψιλον (talk) 19:24, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Fixed, at least for now. Seems to work fine when language is specified; I'm a little concerned this wasn't documented anywhere, but, what can you do? ARR8 (talk) 04:04, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

{{RegionStats}}, {{RegionTasks}} and supporting {{catscancall}} have been updated. First to fix problem above, second to handle planned changes to listing visual editor output. This will affect region expedition pages and some search links on category pages. Checks look good but pay a little extra attention to the results and report and anomalies. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:09, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Seinfeld superfan here. I'll take a look at it over the next few days -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:10, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

After two and a half days of what might be best likened to Jack Kerouac typing the first draft of On the Road onto a 120-foot scroll of paper, I've got the article to within sight of Guide status. Anyone want to chip in with an "Understand" section and/or other background info? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:23, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Good news! The bot to notify us when files are tagged for deletion on Commons has been enabled. Here is its user page. For reference, the discussion that led to this is here, and the request I made on Meta is here. —Granger (talk·contribs) 11:40, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Who on earth introduced the barbarous custom unbeknownst to good citizens of Europe to write "€6" when nobody says "Euro six" but everybody says "Six Euro(s)"? Is this just laziness by our American and/or British friends who are used to having the currency sign where it does not belong or do any Euro-paying people actually do that? And how could that ever enter our Manual of Style? Or is it not in it at all and instead somebody chooses to enforce a policy we do not, in fact, have? Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:04, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

It is, in fact, in the MOS. I was confused when I saw it, too. ARR8 (talk) 16:10, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Try shopping online at an Irish supermarket sometime. You'll see they put the symbol before the number, as is the norm in English, no matter the currency. You'll also find that, e.g. the French Wikivoyage lists prices in pounds and U.S. dollars as e.g. 10 £ / 12,5 $ (yes, note the horrifyingly primitive use of a virgule instead of the proper decimal point. The horror!) It's a language thing, not a "barbarous custom", nor "laziness", and is an entirely proper part of our MOS.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:43, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

If that were so, it would have to be done with all currencies, but that is not - to my knowledge - currently the case. Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:48, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

True, that is indeed not the case with every currency denomination, but most articles using currency symbols ($, €, £, ₹, ¥) as opposed to letters or words do conform to this rule. And in the two other examples of partially English-speaking countries which use the euro, that's how they do it on the ground in English too: Cyprus, Malta.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:47, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

And check almost any English-language newspaper, magazine or book. €100 is the standard format when writing in English, not 100 €. Ground Zero (talk) 18:14, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

It's probably intended to work the same way as the dollar symbol; for example, $100, with the $ symbol before the number. I don't see anything wrong with "€6", to use Hobbitschuster's example, and while it may not be technically correct, anyone reading the article will know what it means. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:28, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

The idea that English is consistent cannot honestly be believed by anyone who has learned to spell it. ;-)WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

$100 is just as illogical as €100, but at least the former is used by the majority of those who pay in USD. The same cannot be said for Euros. Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:31, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

100€ doesn't look like English to me. There's some Logic to german Punctuation and Spellingconventions, but this is the english Wikivoyage. I vote for €100. —Granger (talk·contribs) 00:50, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

English speakers are the people who put almost all adjectives before the nouns; have "they're", "their", and "there", all pronounced the same; have "hear" and "here", pronounced the same but different words; use "be", "being", "been", "is", "was", "were", "am", and "are", all of which function as the same word; use verbs ending in "s" some of the time and not ending in "s" other times (like "he speaks" but "I speak"); include letters with sounds that vary depending on each specific example (for example, "city" and "Canada", or words like "Celts" where the "C" is pronounced differently depending on the speaker); have almost no accent marks so you cannot know where to emphasize syllables; and on the list goes. We do a lot of things that don't seem logical, but they're what people are used to and what people expect, so we do them. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 01:14, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

And what about 17, you say seven-teen, not teen-seven (but the French do say dix-sept = ten-seven), but everybody knows what you mean. However from 21 the the numbers and the words are in the same sequence. --FredTC (talk) 06:27, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Unlike German: neunundneunzig = nine and ninety. Logically, they should reverse the nines when writing the figure, so it's done in the proper way of 99, instead of that barbarous nonsense of 99.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:05, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

At one time they actually used to do numbers in expanded form, but with scores of years. For example, 42 years would be "two score and four years" — think of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. In some ways, that made more sense, but then, why use scores of years instead of tens?

All of these things make it harder to learn the English language, and honestly, Hobbitschuster, I think you're just discovering the way the English language orders currency symbols and the associated values. It's just one example of where the English language doesn't work logically, but putting the currency symbol before the amount is still correct in the English language. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:53, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

On "four score and seven": I offer you by analogy "quatre-vingt sept". Or how about "quatre-vingt onze"? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:24, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Oh wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?" I think we might as well say that it's not wrong to do "$100" or the same with euros or any other currency symbol. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:47, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

(Parenthetical, but "twenty-and-four blackbirds baked in a pie" scans exactly the same as "four-and-twenty", etc. It sounds wrong only because we're used to the latter.) Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:18, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I notice that - to the best of my knowledge - the Manual of Style nowhere prohibits the use of the -ing form, yet a certain editor who shall remain nameless regularly excises them in their "copy edits". Are they in the right, are they in the wrong or is it just a pet peeve either way with nobody having the right of it? Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:19, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

There is no prohibition against gerunds, they are part of the English language. I replace them by an active verb where doing so makes the sentence livelier. Using active verbs instead of gerund phrases seems to be an easy win for improving Wikivoyage's writing. Of course, it doesn't work everywhere. See: I even used "improving" in the last sentence! Ground Zero (talk) 18:48, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

I think word policing has already gone too far on this site, including the systematic extirpation of "located", "situated" etc. (which are sometimes but not always extraneous), and we've become too reliant on WV:Words to avoid in our copyediting efforts, rather than the common-sense considerations of which words make a sentence flow better, to the point where I wonder if WTA isn't doing more harm than good and should be deleted outright. At any rate, I think we should focus less on that and more on adding content. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:00, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

True. I think the same is the case with the euro symbol. It's too minor to really spend a lot of time worrying about.

If I see "located" in an article, I remove it, but otherwise I don't spend a lot of time on the word. I also feel that some of these frustrations (this one and the above) are just users trying to find negative things to say about each other, rather than serious issues that need to be corrected. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:24, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

[edit conflict] We might want to recommend what is guideline if not policy on sv-wp: do not change wording where there are different opinions, unless doing significant additions or copyediting to the article. Nobody owns an article, but many of us have preferences on how we write, and systematically attacking some words or figures of speech raises more irritation than it is worth. There are lots of articles in need of copyediting, and not choosing articles to edit based on whether they have some specific "easy win" the author may not agree on lessens friction (don't take me wrong, I myself generally appreciate others improving on my language). --LPfi (talk) 19:34, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

I take a wholistic approach to copyediting: when I edit an article, I remove touting; I update where there is something obviously out of date; I do my best to correct time, date, phone number and currency formatting; I break up long, consulted sentences; I improve the syntax of sentences obviously written by people whose English is weak (it's clear when someone is thinking in a different language while writing in English); I fix capitalization, punctuation and formatting errors. Focusing on one element of my copyediting and suggesting that it is just a pet peeve or a personal preference is not fair comment. Ground Zero (talk) 20:31, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

And using active verbs is not my idea. It comes from, amongst other sources, The Elements of Style, which is a widely used and respected source. In 2011, Time named it as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923. As Wikipedia says

"William Strunk concentrated on specific questions of usage—and the cultivation of good writing—with the recommendation "Make every word tell"; hence the 17th principle of composition is the simple instruction: "Omit needless words." The book frames this within a triplet credited to an influential lecturer:

Omit needless words

Use active voice

Use parallel construction on concepts that are parallel"

These concepts are common to lots of other references on good writing. Its not just me. Ground Zero (talk) 20:42, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

OK. I haven't been following your edits, nor this conflict more than what I have happened to come across. What you describe is more or less what I am trying to recommend, given you don't have a less than optimal way of finding articles to edit. The diffs I have seen pointed out are dominated by the possible pet peeves of the other user, but they may not be representative. And I am not going to tell native speakers what is or is not good writing. --LPfi (talk) 20:45, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

LPfi, from what I've seen of your edits, your English is excellent, as is that of other regular contributors for whom English is a second language. My comment about contributors whose English is weak is not about anyone in particular, but about articles I sometimes come across that have sentences that use English words with syntax from another language. I do not think that not being a native speaker should ever be used as a reason to exclude anyone from a discussion, or to dismiss their views. We should instead turn to outside references like Strunk to guide us on writing. Ground Zero (talk) 20:53, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Strunk was an American, so here is the perspective of the Englishman George Orwell, who is famous for, inter alia, his essay "Politics and the English Language". There he sets out six rules for writing clear and tight prose:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Numbers 3 and 4 are germane here. I do not think that I have ever applied them in a way so as to run afoul of #6. There are, of course,lots of others who written about good writing, and there are those who disagree with Strunk and Orwell. I cite them because they are widely respected as authorities and to demonstrate that this is not a personal vendetta, or my personal style. This is about good writing, which is something we could use more of in Wikivoyage. Ground Zero (talk) 22:23, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Ground Zero - I was not, nor do I think anyone else was, singling you out for your edits. I've seen several others doing the same thing, in many cases far less carefully than you. I think it's important to note, however, that Wikivoyage strives for a casual and informal tone. I'd say leave strict adherence to the advice of style experts like Strunk to sites where formality is de rigueur. (As for Orwell, "if it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out" is pretty rich coming from the author who wrote about a horrible totalitarian dystopia where the official language was Newspeak.) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:47, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Strunk and Orwell were writing about good writing, not about formal writing. Formal writing would use longer sentences, more complex sentence structure, more phrases like "it should be noted that". Formal writing is not vigorous or lively. And no-one is advocating "strict adherence" to anything. I am just defending myself from Hobbitschuster's attempt to personalize this by claiming that preferring the active voice is just a "pet peeve" of mine (above), or that cutting out needless words is a "personal little crusade". I am following the advice of widely respected authorities on good writing, and using my discretion on when to do so and when not to. Your dig at George Orwell does not make him any less of an authority on writing. Ground Zero (talk) 23:03, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

[Edit conflict] I often edit for brevity, but only when I believe it makes the sentences in question more elegant or at least more readable. As for Strunk & White, their opinion has carried way too much weight - it's just an opinion, and some of their viewpoints were opinionated indeed. For example, the idea that you should favor commas before "which" but not use them before "that". Why? Because they said so. I don't agree. I spent a brief few months on alt.usage.english on USENET (remember USENET?). Too many of the users there were crazy, so I didn't stick around after a while, but a lot of really good points were made on how wrong Strunk & White were, if you considered their prescriptive advice against actual, often longstanding usage. That said, Andre, I think "located" and "situated" are in fact rarely necessary, though there's nothing at all horrible about them, either. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:04, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I'm not against the tight style of writing, but may I say that the writing style that is currently on Wikivoyage seems good to me — it's good English that doesn't add too much information nor have short, choppy sentences. I know I've strayed from this sometimes, like when I partially rewrote the lede for the Atlanta article, but generally I think something between the Dickens style and the Orwell one is appropriate for what we're doing (topics and politics aside, of course).
To brag a little on myself (although I'm not even sure if I wrote the lede), I think the lede of Monument Valley is a good example of the form of prose that is best on Wikivoyage. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:10, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

I also think that the pursuit to remove all of the words on WTA has perhaps gone a bit too far. It's important to ask yourself whether removing the words or phrases will actually improve the legibility, flow and flair of the article. If someone is reading Wikivoyage for the first time and sees a "located" or another WTA word, is it going to negatively impact their opinion of Wikivoyage or make it harder for the reader to comprehend what the sentence says (at a conscious or subconscious level)? Many times the answer will be yes but at other times it will be no. Apart from the extreme marketing hyperbole, all of the words listed on WTA are suitable to be used on Wikivoyage in certain contexts, just as they are used in English writing elsewhere. Gizza (roam) 01:48, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps WTA should be changed from the "status" of "guideline" to the "status" of "essay". --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:18, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I think we should do away with it entirely. We know touting when we see it; we know empty flowery marketing-speak when we see it; we know Captain Obvious when we see him; and we certainly know first-person pronouns when we see them. The article is completely superfluous. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:28, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't need to read any sources on that. I used to be a writing tutor. Passive voice has its place, but active voice is and should be the default. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:00, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I think words to avoid is a useful compendium and useful to refer to in edit summaries or comments on user talk pages. So I oppose deleting it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:02, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

How about renaming it Wikivoyage:Words to watch? That would help signal that it isn't a list of prohibited words, but rather a list of words that are often unclear or otherwise should be used sparingly or with caution. —Granger (talk·contribs) 10:59, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I support rethinking the approach to words to avoid. Word policing tactics that have evolved over the past couple of years risk driving away editors – I myself have curtailed my contributions here because of it. Yes, good clean writing should be encouraged, but IMO the current push for style over substance will never permit the site to grow to its full potential. Context matters. –StellarD (talk) 11:59, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Since most of us who edit with reference to WTA are already participating in this discussion, I'm not so sure the page needs to be changed. We just need to remember that these are words to avoid, not words that we must never, ever use in any circumstance. Perhaps we can all be a little less zealous / strict enforcing it, as we want to encourage new editors, rather than driving them away. On the other hand, we all need to be prepared to have our edits changed by others; if anyone here is unhappy about someone else rewriting their contributions within the agreed upon manual of style, they should reconsider whether a wiki is right for them.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:26, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

The problem is, who decides when it's okay to use a certain instance of "located" and when it isn't? Should we perhaps not remove words like "located" at all? Or should we remove them based on circumstance? That's definitely the challenge here. What one person says is an appropriate use of the word (per WTA) may not be with someone else (also following WTA), and the result could be an edit war. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:47, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I think it would be fine to change the title to "Words to watch", and I also think it's fine to remove words like "located/situated" that are simply not needed but don't do any harm to an article unless (like almost any other word) they're used over and over again. I sure hope never to see a "Located, located, located, located" edit summary again. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:22, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Definitely agree that that kind of edit summary is more likely to turn newbies (and oldies) away than something worded more politely.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:38, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

If you want to re-name that page, then I recommend changing the title completely, perhaps to something like "Tips for better writing". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

WTA is a guideline, which means contributors must use their discretion in applying it. Even our policies should be applied with discretion, because we are not making laws here. (Many laws even allow for some discretion to be exercised.) I certainly do not apply WTA in an absolutist manner. (Any suggestion that I do is simply wrong. My edits demonstrate that I do not remove every instance of "located" or "currently", just most of them.)

Our inability to have an absolute, inflexible law does not mean that we should abandon the principles of WV:tone, which include "Lively writing is welcome", "Be conversational and informal", and "Be concise". We need readers as much as we need contributors, and providing the information is an interesting and informal way just key to attracting and keeping readers, whom we hope will become contributors. That means there will be disagreements that should be resolved through talk pages instead through arbitrary wholesale reversions or edit wars. I am always willing to discuss and negotiate changes on talk pages, and other contributors should be prepared to do so as well in this collaborative project. Ground Zero (talk) 17:39, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

"Tips for better writing" is a good idea. Then, the "Words to avoid" section could be a "words to watch" section, and we could have other sections that suggest writing sentences only as long as is necessary to get your points across elegantly, thereby regarding sentences (like this one) that have multiple clauses with caution, etc. Recommendations to use active voice when passive voice isn't necessary could also be part of such an article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:33, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't object to incorporating WTA into a "Tips" article, but I expect it will be a challenge to get agreement on the other parts of the article, given the resistance to standard references in the matter.

Let's remember that this discussion began with a question about whether the Manual of Style prohibits the use of the -ing form, and the implication that if a particular form of the verb isn't prohibited, then it shouldn't be changed. I have been told by other contributors that if a word isn't on WTA, it shouldn't be removed. I use the general guidance provided by WV:tone as the basis for my edits, rather than WTA, but it seems that some contributors either don't like WV:tone, or feel that it isn't specific enough to be useful in determining what edits are appropriate. Ground Zero (talk) 23:54, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

"Tips for better writing" sounds reasonable to me. We should remember WTA is by no means an absolute rule, and be careful not to sacrifice clear, lively writing in order to follow arbitrary rules like avoiding "located" or using the active voice. —Granger (talk·contribs) 23:50, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Although we should remember that using the active voice and not using needless words is how most standard guides on writing suggest you can make your writing livelier. No-one is suggesting making the WTA guideline an absolute enforceable policy. No-one is suggesting that, so I don't know why some are spending so much time arguing against it. We also should not require contributors to use only their left hands while editing. But no-one is suggesting that either. Ground Zero (talk) 00:10, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

To put it plainly, some people quite obviously feel that you, and possibly I, have been overzealous in making style edits.

As for "standard references": This is not Wikipedia. There is absolutely no reason to refer to any external style guide in order for Wikivoyage to have its own style. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:16, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Same here. It's easy to go around and look for minor edits to make, but harder to really contribute. Our goal should be to bring down the number of outline articles, since they are currently over half of Wikivoyage's articles. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:50, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Ikan Kekek, by standard references, I mean what most of the rest of the world thinks about good writing. I'm sure that we don't think that the few dozen active editors here are going to come up with a better approach to good writing than the numerous style guides I've mentioned.

SelfieCity, I have so far raised all of the city and park-level outline articles in Canada's four western provinces to usable, and am on the verge of completing Ontario. See my user page. So I make "real contributions" in addition to improving the readability of the articles in line with WV:tone. There is so much crappy writing, bad formatting, incorrect punctuation, random capitalization and so on here, that copyediting is an important part of improving the quality and usability of Wikivoyage. There is nothing in our Manual of Style that says that the only thing that matters is hotel and restaurant listings, and the rest of the article can be shitty. We can and have to do better than that if we're going to be taken seriously by readers. Ground Zero (talk) 01:39, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I hope everyone realizes how much great work you've done. However, the choice isn't between no style edits and editing everything. When people push back, they don't say "This site should be full of shitty writing, grammar and spelling mistakes, etc." They say things like "Don't edit the life out of an article in order to streamline it as much as possible" or "leave a few 'locateds' alone and do something else". We shouldn't ignore them. Also, if you'd prefer to refer everyone to Strunk & White, don't expect them to thumb through the book. We already have Wikivoyage:Manual of style. Adding some more style information, based on experiences we've had here and without a lot of things Strunk & White deal with that are irrelevant here, might be useful. Or maybe not. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:18, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree that copyediting is important, and we have many articles that desperately need it, especially about destinations where English isn't the main language. I rarely find myself disagreeing with Ikan Kekek about style edits, and only occasionally with Ground Zero. But I do sometimes see edits (I can't remember from who – mostly other users, I think) that strike me as overly strict enforcement of WTA. —Granger (talk·contribs) 02:22, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Ikan Kekek, I absolutely do leave some "locateds" in, and a lot more than I used to. I included the key points from Strunk and from Orwell above. I don't think we need more than the appropriate parts of those. Some of the push-back is coming from people who don't like having "their" articles edited. In the particular case of this discussion, Hobbitschuster is objecting to me making verbs active on the basis that -ing verbs are not prohibited by the Manual of Style. I don't think that his absolutist position, which ignores WV:tone, is something that we should try to accomodate. As I indicated in my first reply, I use gerunds sometimes, but I do change them to active verbs where it makes the writing liveler. I am always willing to discuss and compromise, but some editors are not interested in doing that. Ground Zero (talk) 03:37, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

City-busz and I have done quite a lot of work on the Hungary articles, and when I go through some old listings that were written before City busz or me edited on Wikivoyage, I can hardly understand them at all because they are poorly written. While writing is extremely important on the website, I'd agree that copyediting is important too. The key is to not get distracted from the central goal of the website, which is a travel guide, not articles that follow Strunk's guide to every letter. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 05:08, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

It's a good thing that no-one is advocating following Strunk to every letter then. Ground Zero (talk) 10:43, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I've been updating various listings at the Strood article however for Diggerland (Strood#Do) for the opening hours I've put it as "Varies (See https://www.diggerland.com/opening-dates/)"
My question is are links like this allowed ?,
It's remained at "Varies" for quite some time however I feel it would be more helpful in sending them to the external link so that way they can see as opposed to it just saying "Varies" and then they have to go hunting but I wasn't sure if this was technically allowed so thought I'd ask
Many thanks, –Davey2010Talk 21:50, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Also just to add the hours vary each month and it would take forever to include all dates manually hence why I feel sending to ext link would be better, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 21:53, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

(ec) @Davey2010: Since no one else's replied, I'll give this a shot; just bear in mind I don't have a perfect understand of the rules, myself, yet. The change isn't ideal, because, in keeping with wv:external links, our pages should be as self-contained as possible. At the end of the day, though, wv:the traveler comes first, and if the only way to have that information there is to link to it, that's preferable to not having it at all, and seems to me that 'varies+link' serves the traveler better than just 'varies.'

One small note I'd add - reading the listing, it's not clear from context that the text is part of the hours field, so maybe I'd rephrase 'varies' to 'hours vary'. Otherwise, I think there's no problems. ARR8 (talk) 02:51, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

No need to remove the question, even if you don't need the answer anymore. It may help someone else, and, besides, I was in the middle of replying. ARR8 (talk) 02:52, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi @ARR8:, I tend to come here like 3 times a year so generally I have no knowledge at all with policies and whatnot so don't worry you're not the only one :),

That's something I've certainly picked up today is that the fields are all rather confusing - I personally feel the listings should include the titles too (ie "hours:", "address:") or something similiar as the text certainly can be confusing,

Ah good spot "hours vary" is certainly a lot better :),

Ah sorry I thought judging by the no replies I didn't think anyone really cared so was just going to leave the content as is but anyway many thanks for your reply as well as for changing the content :)

Sure thing. Hope we see more of you around here; your contributions are certainly appreciated. Best, ARR8 (talk) 03:11, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks so much and your contributions are greatly appreciated here too, Again many thanks for your help it's very much appreciated, –Davey2010Talk 19:03, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I ran into a similar problem a while ago. The attraction had different business hours nearly every month of the year. I think I eventually summarized it as something like "Opens at 10AM, closing hours vary seasonally", but I never found a great way to handle it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes: Closed 15 Oct–20 Dec and 15 May–20 June; 7 Jan–5 Feb Tu–Sa 10–15; 21 Dec–6 Jan and 6 Feb–10 May M–F 10–17, Sa–Su,... and of course the opening dates vary according to school holidays, weekdays etc. so have to be updated every year. I suppose most visitors should check the website (if opening hours are easily found the main link suffices), but if they don't have Internet connection on the go, some rough opening hours are good to have in the listing, such as the "opens at 10 AM...". --LPfi (talk) 18:14, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

When things get super complicated like that, I usually fudge it with something like "See website for opening hours". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:20, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes. But if one can extract some regularities, such as shoulder seasons Tu–Sa 10–15, longer hours daily in season, closed off season except Christmas, that is helpful for those who cannot reach the web but have downloaded the guide. Of course, if there are similar venues around, not telling much about the one with odd hours is OK. --LPfi (talk) 18:59, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi @AndreCarrotflower:, I like that! :), Just wondering tho would something like "See here for opening hours" be okay?, Many thanks, –Davey2010Talk 19:04, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Maybe "Hours vary, but open mid-morning to early evening most days" would be more immediately informative than just "See here". WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:59, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Excellent app. Going to try that out when I travel to Europe in February (again). This raises a question. Why aren't our country pages have the national flag of the country? OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:56, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Why do you think they should? Anyway, the answer is that a decision was made that it's not important for readers to see a country's flag before they visit the country. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:13, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

@Syced: Any chance of an open-source version of the app? ARR8 (talk) 05:57, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

These are all currently dealt with using warning or info boxes on the relevant pages, & that seems mostly a good solution but I wonder what improvements might be possible. Certainly there are some difficulties.

These things change often so maintenance is a problem. We may not be up-to-date & I've deleted several thoroughly obsolete warnings.

When a high level article has a serious warning, what should be in lower-level articles under it? Their own warnings? Links to the high-level warning? Nothing, assuming readers will look at the higher-level article as well? In general, I prefer the second choice but might use either of the others in particular cases. Pashley (talk) 08:43, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

We have a "lastedit=" field on {{warningbox}} which can be used to add warnings to a maintenance category after half a year, but nothing similar for {{cautionbox}}. That is odd as warnings are often de-escalated to cautions as a first step before they are removed (DEADLY HURRICANE INCOMING → community is rebuilding after destructive hurricane → never mind, we're back...).

Which article gets the warning depends on the nature of the threat. A national government doing something evil and malicious (such as separating families at the border) should merit an urgent warning at the country level; conversely a tropical storm or active volcano is usually local or regional (unless the entire country is Montserrat-sized and fits on a page or two).

Road construction usually only rates a cautionbox if a road or single-point-of-failure bridge is out (such as the rail line to Churchill, which should be back in service this month). Routine traffic jams don't get warning boxes. K7L (talk) 09:09, 17 December 2018 (UTC)